Volume 3, Issue 5 – October, 2000

Andrea Kane: Run For Your Life

Pocket (Paperback), ISBN 0671036564

Wow, what a book! What a plot! What marvelous characters! What conflict!

Victoria Kensington, a Manhattan lawyer in a struggling law firm, jogs in Central Park every morning. One morning, she runs into her sister Audrey, clad in a yellow hospital gown and very ill, on the path. Audrey tries to warn Victoria of danger. Victoria goes for help and returns to find her sister gone, vanished without a trace.

Everyone, including Victoria’s father, assures Victoria that she must be mistaken, that Audrey never left Europe. Victoria knows better and sets out to prove it by finding her sister. Despite threats to her life, she works alone until Zachary Hamilton, the only man Victoria ever loved, appears in New York. Hamilton, there at the behest of several government agencies, thinks an international drug syndicate may be tied to Audrey’s disappearance. Victoria and Zachary must work together. That’s where the romance, sex, and doubt comes in — enough to make this a first-rate romantic suspense.

I read, reviewed, and enjoyed two previous books by Andrea Kane, both historical romances. When Run For Your Life came for review, I grabbed it and started reading immediately. Then a few doubts set in. I put down the book and scratched my head, but soon leaped back into the roller coaster ride the book offered. My doubts lasted less than a page before Kane dispelled them with her superb telling of an excellent, edgy, explosive tale of family pride, power struggles, love, misunderstandings and danger.

Contemporary romantic suspense appears to be a new genre for Kane, but if this book serves as any indication of her expertise, then I hope she will give her readers the pleasure of many more such novels in the future. An extraordinary read, by a master teller of tales, Run For Your Life ranks high on my keeper list.

Patricia Lucas White

Patricia Lucas White’s latest historical novel, To Last a Lifetime, was an Eppie finalist for 2003. To Last a Lifetime and two of her fantasy romances, the Sapphire Award-winning A Wizard Scorned and The Godmother Sanction, can be ordered through Hard Shell Word Factory. Her recent contemporary, PS, I’ve Taken a Lover, is available from Lionhearted Books.