Suspicion of Betrayal

Yes there were many suspects. At first. Then the author totally gave everything away and made the last part of the book very dull. Which isn’t saying much considering that the first part of the book wasn’t that exciting to begin with. Sure there are the creepy pictures and the weird mechanical voice on the phone, but the tension never really builds. Gail is too unsympathetic a figure, too. Her blind attraction to Anthony Quintana, her leftover attraction to her ex-husband Dave and her ‘oh well, things will work out in the end’ attitude are really annoying. For someone who is supposed to be so smart, she sure gets thrown for loop after loop.

At first I thought it might be Dave. Then I thought it might be Anthony, trying to make it show more look so bad at Gail’s that the court would give Karen to Dave. Then when the old case files are dredged out and we hear about the man who got his house taken away by a bank that Gail represented. He is ruined and then kills his kids and his wife and then himself. Well, almost. The wife lived. About 2 paragraphs after that, Gail’s inept receptionist starts acting nuts, gets fired and then Gail finds out she didn’t have a husband or kids. Bingo. Revenge motive. Deranged widow. The bit framing Gail’s handyman was mildly interesting, but not much was done with it. It was as if the author knew it was a throw-away piece from the beginning.

In the end we learn that although Anthony isn’t behind the harassment or threats, he isn’t as loving and wonderful as portrayed. He deliberately soured a deal between Dave and a major corporation so that Dave would continue to be a loser and wouldn’t stand any chance of winning Gail back. Gail finds out about it and about the fact that Anthony’s grandfather had her client’s husband killed in order to protect his own crimes from being discovered. She breaks it off and Anthony turns into a complete asshole. Thankfully, the book was over by then. show less