Santa Fe Dead

February 25, 2008
Bestseller Woods's third thriller to feature prominent New Mexican attorney Ed Eagle (after Short Straw
and Santa Fe Rules
) opens with a bang, but soon devolves into a fairly predictable cat-and-mouse game. Ed and his girlfriend, actress Susannah Wilde, are watching the Los Angeles trial on Court TV of his villainous ex-wife, Barbara, who stands accused of arranging for his murder, when a reporter announces that Barbara has escaped from custody just before the not guilty verdict. Soon, suitably disguised and under an alias, Barbara contrives to meet a recent widower, Palo Alto billionaire Walter Keeler, at a luxury spa and has him proposing marriage and making a new will in her favor. Meanwhile, her hatred for her ex unquenched, Barbara schemes to have Ed and Susannah killed. Bodies, innocent and otherwise, pile up, but there's little suspense about the outcome, and an improbable coincidence involving the billionaire may strike some as a plot weakness. Author tour.

March 15, 2008
Ed Eagle, one of Santa Fes top criminal trial lawyers, has a wife who has pursued him like one of the Furies since Short Straw in 2006. The plot takes off, as gracefully as a pregnant goose, with Eagle watching a TV recap of the trial of his wife for a double homicide: the commentator tells viewers that Eagle and his wife met when Barbara (the baddie) was serving a sentence for armed robbery, got married (Eagles judgment seems questionable here), and then, a few years later, Barbara absconded with all of Eagles assets and committed a double murder of a couple whom she believed were Eagle and his new girlfriend. Eagle the character cannot survive without Barbara the avenger, so the next bit of TV information is that Barbara has just escaped from the courthouse. Shes been acquitted, shes on the loose, and, once again, shes after Eagle. Absurd plotting andinane characterization, but Woods is one of those name-brand authors, like James Patterson, who has acquired legions of fans who will devour whatever their adored ones serve up.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)