Publishers Weekly
01/14/2019
Bestseller Woods’s fast-paced 49th Stone Barrington novel picks up where its predecessor, 2018’s A Delicate Touch, left off. New York attorney Stone and his latest paramour, New York Times reporter Jamie Cox, are ensconced at his English estate, where Jamie is working on her book exposing the links between a family-owned investment bank, H. Thomas & Son, and organized crime. Since Henry Thomas, the family patriarch, blames Stone for unearthing this damaging information, he and his henchmen are bent on revenge. When a hired gun takes an errant shot at Stone on the estate grounds, Stone and Jamie flee England for the comparative safety of his Manhattan townhouse. Meanwhile, Henry is angling to have his former congressman son, Hank, become the Republican candidate for president, which involves derailing the campaign of the popular if obnoxious junior senator from Florida, Joe Box. The tension rises as a determined assassin makes a deal with the Thomases to kill Stone, who’s dropped his guard after mistakenly believing they no longer have reason to do him in. Woods shows no sign of flagging in this long-running series. Author tour. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Fans of Barrington and his entourage will enjoy another installment in a series where price is no object for the hero when it comes to solving crimes and satisfying his material needs.”—Booklist
“Woods shows no sign of flagging in this long-running series.”—Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2019-02-17
As if to prove that the relative success of Stone Barrington's most recent thriller (A Delicate Touch, 2018) was a fluke, Woods drags back the surviving baddies for a limp sequel that proves mainly that enough is enough.
The case against Rance Damien, horribly scarred but not killed by the fire that resulted when Stone's techie, Bob Cantor, blew up the control center of the nefarious H. Thomas & Sons Bank, has fallen apart because all the incriminating records of Damien and bank patriarch Henry Thomas' malfeasance were destroyed in the blaze. So Damien's out of jail and intent on getting revenge against Stone. It's a fool's errand, as any one of the dozens of criminal masterminds who've tried to kill the cop-turned-lawyer-turned-conspicuous consumer could have warned him, because the professional killers hired to eliminate him will always miss whatever they aim at, often killing someone else instead and leaving their target "peacefully in the knowledge that neither of the two men shot in the ass was himself." The stakes are raised, though the tension isn't increased an iota, when Thomas and Damien decide to back the presidential campaign of Florida Republican Sen. Joseph Box, whose likely opponent is Secretary of State Holly Barker, one of Stone's bevy of ex-lovers. Overnight Box begins to talk like less of a blooming idiot thanks to the ministrations of Harvard-trained speechwriter Ari Kramer. As if he's not smarting enough already, Damien soon learns that Thomas' secretary Elise Grant, getting wind of her bosses' murderous schemes, defects to Stone, whose current inamorata, New York Times reporter Jamie Cox, publishes a blistering takedown of H. Thomas & Sons just as they're about to be acquired by an equally conscience-free hedge fund. Will this be the time that Stone and his team finally go too far? Of course it won't.
Despite more complications than a 12-month pregnancy, there's less suspense here than in a three-minute egg.
