Family Jewels

February 8, 2016
At the start of bestseller Woods’s breezy 37th Stone Barrington novel (after Scandalous Behavior), wealthy divorcee Carrie Fiske hires the New York City detective turned attorney to dissuade her ex-husband, Harvey Biggers, from stalking her and to remove Biggers from her will. Stone tasks his associate, former boxer Fred Flicker, with the first assignment, and he accepts Carrie’s invitation for a weekend of business and pleasure in the Hamptons so that he might undertake the second. Stone revises the document, but barely has time to sample his lobster salad before discovering a dead body with ties to Biggers. He’s soon embroiled in a mystery that involves a priceless object with cultural and historical significance. Tony trappings, colorful characters, and a magnificent McGuffin provide ample distraction from the occasional dangling plot thread and the implausible ease and frequency with which Stone lands lucrative cases and beds beautiful women. Dry-witted dialogue keeps the tone light and drives this glossy, modern take on the classic detective story. Author tour. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.

February 15, 2016
Between rounds of international intrigue and blood feuds (Scandalous Behavior, 2016, etc.), even superheroes need a little down time, and Woods provides some for New York cop-turned-attorney-turned-world's policeman Stone Barrington in his latest outing. Shoe heiress Carrie Jarman Fiske comes to Stone because she's convinced that her ex-husband, money manager Harvey Biggers, wants to kill her. And Harvey certainly acts the part to the hilt, turning up in public places to gawk at her, following her across the country to Santa Fe, trying to let himself in to her Palm Beach home. But the corpse Stone discovers in a bedroom next door to Carrie's East Hampton place is that of a stranger, prostitute Darla Henry, who'd been Harvey's companion at a New Year's Eve shindig. What does her death mean? Nothing. Stone persuades Carrie to change the will that left her considerable estate to Harvey, but she gets strangled anyway deep in Georgia O'Keeffe country. Did Harvey, who'd been spotted nearby hours before, kill her? No. Even before the hostile ex, who'd claimed that Carrie was trying to kill him, proves a disconcertingly ironclad alibi, Stone has moved on to yet another complication: Carrie's possession of a choker that looks just like the one Gustav Klimt's model wore in the painting the movies have forever dubbed The Lady in Gold. Is it the real thing or a clever copy? And either way, will some forgettable jewel thief make off with it before Jamie Niven, Stone's friend at Sotheby's, places it on the auction block? If these questions make your heart beat faster, this is the tale for you. President Kate Lee also invites Stone to review the candidacies of three attorneys, one of them his insatiable ex-fling Tiffany Baldwin, for the Supreme Court. Maybe his recommendation will have consequences in some later installment of this bestselling series. A low-stakes, low-octane thriller that seems to have been cobbled together entirely from dead ends.

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