Dishonorable Intentions

April 25, 2016
Boris Tirov, the hapless villain of Edgar-winner Woods’s diverting 38th Stone Barrington novel (after Family Jewels), detests Stone, a suave, well-connected New York City attorney whose latest lady friend happens to be Boris’s ex-wife, screenwriter Gala Wilde. Stone flies his private jet to Santa Fe, N.Mex., where Gala has a house, and later to England, where Stone owns an estate with its own airfield, but the vengeful Boris, a Hollywood movie producer with rumored connections to the Russian mob, remains hot on their trail. The ease with which Stone keeps Boris at bay threatens to become monotonous until Boris cuts a deal with Russian president Viktor Petrov: in exchange for Petrov not extraditing Boris from the U.S. on a long-standing murder charge, Boris will ensure that Petrov has an intimate meeting with a beautiful American actress who’s due to arrive in Moscow for a movie premiere. Woods leaves this intriguing plot line up in the air, presumably to be continued in a later installment, as the main action speeds toward Boris’s final, foolish attempt to get even with Stone. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.

June 1, 2016
In his twenty-eighth Stone Barrington novel (following Family Jewels, 2015), Woods adds a yacht to the bon-vivant attorney's cache of expensive playthings. Stone's most recent female companion, Gala Wilde, is a screenwriter with a very jealous ex-husband. Her former spouse is also a powerful film producer with a couple of Russian mobsters on retainer. Stone and Gala globe-trot to Stone's various estates and hotels as they try to stay one step ahead of the vindictive ex. Along the way, they make time for a menage a trois with the head of Britain's M16 foreign intelligence agency and, of course, take delivery on that new $1.5 million yacht. Devoted fans of Stone's larger-than-life exploits will enjoy the luxury-goods name-dropping and the ever-present swagger of this seasoned but still sexy series lead.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016

Stone Barrington is back, working his behind-the-scenes magic for the white-shoe Manhattan law firm that employs him as he ping-pongs between government intelligence and high society. Look for the book at ALA annual in Orlando.

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