SUMMARY: Three criminals are locked together in a room during a riot in the courthouse. To pass the time, they each fantasize about the three people they would most like to kill and then marvel that if one killed the other's victims, it would be almost impossible to trace. It seemed like a harmless game, until those on one of the lists starts dying. Child advocate Mara Douglas, haunted by the abduction of her young daughter, is one of the unwitting targets; her sister Anne Marie McCall, an FBI profiler, recruits fellow agent Aidan Shaw to protect Mara, luring him out of self-imposed exile after the death of his brother, a fellow agent and McCall's lover. As the killer gets closer, Mara's days appear to be numbered.

WHY YOU'LL LIKE IT: Winning characters and able action sequences spur on this otherwise run-of-the-mill tale. The built-in romance is bittersweet and well-written. Mara isn't a milquetoast heroine either; she has some grit.

WHY YOU WON'T: The psychobabble spun around the killer's past and impetus for committing murders is banal and nothing new or exciting.

BOTTOM LINE: No new ground is broken, but the novel is filled with frothy intrigue. What is most intriguing is that each of the criminals and their list of victims is given their own novel to develop their stories. The saga is continued in Stewart's Dead Certain and Dead Even. Worth checking out. I'd give it 3.5 stars if possible. ( )

I guess this was a good book, since I started it at lunchtime yesterday and had it finished by 10 last night. I also added her next 2 books to my "want"� list. ( )