After spending a year in prison, Ralph has explicit plans for his first night of freedom: tonight, someone will be held accountable. He goes to murderous lengths to learn the address of his former wife β the woman he blames for his fate. Determined to bring her to his idea of justice, Ralphβs next step is to travel from Florida to Ohio to find his ex-wifeβs house on Mad River Road.
Also in Florida, Jamie Kellogg wakes from the agonizing nightmare of her motherβs funeral, and assesses her life: sheβs a twenty-nine-year-old woman in a dead-end job, with an ex-husband in Atlanta, a married lover in the hospital, and a virtual stranger in her bed. But this stranger is everything the previous men in her life werenβt: tender, attentive, and adventurous. After convincing Jamie to quit her miserable job and ditch her judgmental, perfectionist sister, Ralph proposes a romantic getaway. While Jamie wonders if this thrilling man might finally be her Prince Charming, they plan a road trip to visit his son, who lives with his mother on a street called Mad River Road.
As riveting and beguiling as Joy Fieldingβs previous novels, Mad River Road is a tale of courage, truth, and the need to trust oneβs instincts.
From the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
In the nail-biting 18th suspense novel from Fielding (Puppet), a trio of women trapped in a web of lies, danger and self-revelation must confront their deepest fears. Lily and Emma, each a young mother with an adorable young son, are carving out new lives in a depressing Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood that caters to single mothers, while Jamie, in Florida, is a 29-year-old single dealing with the recent death of her mother and an affair with a married man who's been hospitalized. Both Lily, an aspiring writer, and Emma, a compulsive liar and shoplifter, struggle to recover from tragedies that led both to assume new names. When a sexy but dangerous man Jamie meets in a bar persuades her to quit her job and escape her perfectionist sister, the pretty but insecure blonde winds up on a wild road trip to Ohio that will inextricably link her fate with that of Lily and Emma. Packed with breathless twists and turns, Fielding's latest set of women in jeopardy excite and delight. (Jan.)
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From Booklist
With Whispers and Lies (2002), veteran best-selling author Fielding delivered a novel with Hitchcock-level suspense, and she has been trying, somewhat desperately, to match that level of excellence ever since. Better than her previous effort, Lost(2003), but not as good as Whispers Fielding's new novel tracks the movements of a man recently released after spending a year in jail on domestic-abuse charges. Ralph, who blames his jail time on a nosy neighbor, breaks into her apartment and forces her to give up his ex-wife's new address. Meanwhile, flighty Jamie Kellogg, constantly berated by her mother and her sister for her lack of a career and a steady boyfriend, meets a handsome stranger in a bar who talks her into quitting her job and traveling across the country to Mad River Road. Fielding uses a number of inventive techniques to keep readers involved in her story, including clueing us in to the identity of Jamie's new boyfriend from the get-go and showing her downward spiral from infatuation to disillusionment to sheer terror. She also throws in a delicious plot twist. Unfortunately, uninspired dialogue and a one-dimensional villain detract from her pointed commentary on relationships and her imaginative plotting. Still, Fielding's fans will want to check out her latest offering. Joanne Wilkinson
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