Julie Garwood, Murder List

Murder List

Julie Garwood

Ballantine, Aug 2004, $25.95, 403 pp.

ISBN: 0345453824

Wealthy Heiress Regan Hamilton Madison and her two best friends attend a weekend conference sponsored by a rich con man. They hope to find proof to tie their host to the death of a woman who signed all her assets to him. One of the exercises that the attendees perform is drawing up a list of people they would like to see gone. Fed up with the smarmy atmosphere, Regan leaves early and spots a man who threatens her. Regan drops her files, including her murder list, in panic and drives away.

While in her office at her family's Chicago hotel, Regan receives an email supposedly from her assistant. When she downloads the attached file, she sees a picture of a dead male, who was on her list. A fax arrives next with the picture of another person from Regan's MURDER LIST. Detective Alec Buchanan is assigned as Regan's bodyguard and a relationship between them begins while everyone hunts a killer.

Almost no one does romantic suspense as well as Julie Garwood consistently does it; her latest, MURDER LIST, is a bit different for this top-rate author as she incorporates the humor that makes her historicals so special into the plot of this thriller. Readers will root for the protagonists to succeed in their professional and personal lives as both are likable. MURDER LIST is a great romantic suspense that is a sure-shot to attain New York Times bestseller status and hopefully Regan's three brotherly hunks obtain their respective tale to join this one on the list.

Harriet Klausner