Piatkus, London, 2001

This was my first Sandra Brown novel, and I still think, it´s her best. The plot is really complicated, a novel within a novel.

Maris, a married New York editor, finds a manuscript with the first chapter of a thriller on her desk. As she thinks it is a unique story, she tries to contact the author, Parker Evans. He lives a reclusive life on an island in the south and insists that she come and see him, if she wants to read the full story. So she meets him on his own terms and finds a misanthropist bound to a wheelchair.

This wouldn´t be a true Sandra Brown novel, if the two didn´t fall in love, after all. And at the same time, while Parker is reading his novel to Marvis, a  murderous relationship between two writers is revealed, but not here, of course. Otherwise you wouldn´t read the book! Most astonishing for me is the self-assurance, with which Brown acclaims her novel in the novel to be brilliant literature.