Foreign Affairs

July 20, 2015
Edgar-winner Woods’s appealing 35th Stone Barrington novel (after Naked Greed) takes the peripatetic New York lawyer, playboy, and investor to Rome, where the Arrington Group, of which he is a board member, is planning to build a palatial new hotel. On Stone’s last-minute flight from JFK, he meets Hedy Kiesler, a beautiful artist, with whom he shares an upgrade to first class—and later a bed in Rome. Meanwhile, Leonardo Casselli, a relocated New York Mafia don, makes it clear that the hotel won’t go up peacefully until he gets his share of the action. Stone calls on old friends Dino Bacchetti of the NYPD and Mike Freeman of Strategic Services for aid in his fight with Casselli, who has plenty of goons at his disposal. When Hedy becomes a pawn in the conflict, Stone devises a dangerous plan to infiltrate Casselli’s stronghold on the Amalfi coast. The finale boasts Woods’s customary combination of panache and brio. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.

August 15, 2015
A former New York Mafioso who's fled home to Italy kidnaps the latest inamorata of the redoubtable Stone Barrington (Hot Pursuit, 2015, etc.). Big mistake.Stone's flown the Atlantic at an hour's notice, flirting en route with painter Hedy Kiesler, to vote in favor of opening a new Arrington Hotel in Rome. No sooner have the contracts been signed than trouble erupts. The unfinished hotel already standing abandoned on the site is torched; Stone's borrowed car is stolen and set alight as well; he gets several increasingly overt threats encouraging him to go home and forget the deal; and it's clear that they're coming from Leonardo Casselli, the patriarchal mobster who just hates being called Leo. Packing Hedy off from his hotel bed in Rome to another bed in Paris, Stone stays just long enough to read the riot act in response to Casselli's suave luncheon offer of extortionate "protection," threatening him with the extensive resources of Massimo Bertelli's Italian Anti-Mafia Investigative Department; Stone's unfathomably wealthy business partner Marcel duBois; his buddy Mike Freeman's company, Strategic Services; his even closer buddy Commissioner Dino Bacchetti's New York Police Department; and President Katharine Rule Lee, another close personal friend. Then he hastens back to Rome, leaving Hedy in his Paris house, from which she's promptly abducted. Stone soon finds out that Casselli's holding Hedy in an impregnable house on the Amalfi coast; Casselli soon finds out that Stone wasn't kidding about all those connections. Apart from all the big names tossed in to cow Casselli, Woods mostly soft-pedals the usual gratuitous inflation and extraneous subplots, keeping things simple, straightforward, and pleasantly predictable.

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September 1, 2015
Hot on the heels of Naked Greed (2015), Woods' latest potboiler finds Stone Barrington headed to Italy to meet with his French business partner to break ground on another luxurious Arrington hotel. But the Mafia, in the form of thuggish Leonardo Casselli, wants their cut, and when Stone refuses to play ball, he finds himself in danger. Also in jeopardy is Stone's new lady love, Hedy Kiesler, a painter who takes a shine to Stone on the plane to Italy. The CIA decides to use Stone as bait to entrap Casselli, but it's Hedy who finds herself in jeopardy when she's abducted from Stone's house in Paris. Though Hedy's kidnapping provides some suspense, much of it is eroded by Stone's largely passive response and Casselli's complete and utter ineptitude as a villain. The fans who clamor for frequent Stone Barrington adventures will likely be satisfied with the status quo, but lately the series has started to feel like it's treading water.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2015

Stone Barrington is back--he's a frequent visitor with Woods doing four books a year now--but he's not staying put. Told last minute about a mandatory meeting abroad, he's off to Rome. Last year's Carnal Curiosity was the perennially popular Woods's first No. 1 New York Times best seller. With a 300,000-copy first printing.

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