Amazon.com (ISBN 0312983832, Mass Market Paperback)

Network correspondent Cassie Sheridan, a rising star at KEY's Washington bureau, is exiled to the Miami office after her ambitions overpower her common sense and she identifies a victim of the Clown Rapist as the daughter of the head of the FBI. Not only is her career on the skids, but her private life's also a mess, and meanwhile, there's nothing more newsworthy happening than a hurricane warning on Florida's west coast. Then an 11-year-old boy with a metal detector discovers the remains of a dead porn star on a Siesta Key beach. She's wearing a ruby ring that's too tempting a treasure to turn over to the police, but what young Vincent Bayler doesn't know is that it's also an item that at least one upstanding local citizen would do anything to keep from being traced back to him--including kidnapping Vincent's seriously ill brother to convince him to return the ring, and getting Cassie off his trail--permanently. This is a well-crafted but predictable thriller by Clark, whose fictional network (and its anything-for-a-story reporters) couldn't possibly bear more than a fleeting and coincidental resemblance to CBS, where she's been a writer and producer for many years--or could it? --Jane Adams