All Dressed in White

November 9, 2015
The prologue of Clark and Burke's scintillating sequel to 2014's The Cinderella Murder introduces bride-to-be Amanda Pierce, who vanishes the day before her wedding in Palm Beach, Fla. More than five years later, the fate of the so-called "Runaway Bride" is still unknown. It's another intriguing cold case for producer Laurie Moran to recreate for her investigative TV series, Under Suspicion. In classic detective fiction style, Laurie and her crew, including Alex Buckley, a defense lawyer who's also Laurie's boyfriend, reassemble the whole wedding party for a re-enactment at the original venue, Palm Beach's posh Grand Victoria Hotel. Secrets, some worth killing for, emerge quickly and entertainingly as the suspicion spotlight falls on, among others, the groom, the maid of honor, and Amanda's sister. Clark and Burke's collaboration is as smooth as rum and coke, with just enough kick to make the reader thirsty for another. Agent: Robert B. Barnett, Williams and Connolly.

November 1, 2015
Laurie Moran and the crew of Under Suspicion (The Cinderella Murder, 2014, etc.) revisit the 5-year-old case of the bride who vanished hours before she was supposed to walk down the aisle. Despite some understandable last-minute jitters on both sides, Amanda Pierce had been looking forward eagerly to joining hands in marriage with attorney Jeff Hunter at the splishy Grand Victoria Hotel in Palm Springs. Instead she went down in tabloid history as the runaway bride who disappeared the night before the ceremony. Now her mother, Sandra Pierce, wants Under Suspicion, which specializes in dramatizing, and incidentally solving, cold cases on television, to reopen the mystery. Producer Laurie gets Walter Pierce, Sandra's workaholic ex, on board, along with bridesmaids Kate Fulton, Meghan White, and Charlotte Pierce, the bride's older sister, and groomsmen Nick Young, Austin Pratt, and Henry Pierce, the bride's brother. Complications have already arisen before the Under Suspicion crew even arrives in Florida. Jeff is now married to Meghan, whom he had dated briefly before she introduced him to Amanda back at Colby College, the school the wedding party had all attended. Bill Walker, the wedding photographer, suddenly recalls that the police never questioned his intern, Jeremy Carroll, who, then as now, seemed a little bit off. Laurie can't quite satisfy herself why Amanda would have left her modest belongings to Sandra Pierce, Henry's daughter, but her $2 million trust fund to the fiance she'd just gotten to sign a prenup. And news about the strangling of Colby student Carly Romano back in the wedding party's college days hangs like a dark cloud over the increasingly tense Grand Victoria. Methodical, efficient, brand-name genre thrills guaranteed not to frighten the horses.

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November 15, 2015
Producer-investigator Laurie Moran has found the perfect mystery for her hit crime-solving reality show, Under Suspicionthe case of Amanda Pierce, the runaway bride. Five years previously, Amanda disappeared the night before her wedding day, and now her mother thinks TV exposure just may be the way to find out at last what happened and why. Was it Amanda's jealous sister? Her fiance's Leopold and Loeblike groomsmen? Or the fiance himself, who suspiciously married Amanda's best friend, Meghan, soon after Amanda disappeared? In spite of a promising start, Laurie's interrogation of the wedding party as they re-create the event in Palm Beach produces rather thin, unconvincing motives, which Laurie and her lawyer-boyfriend, Alex, hash and rehash, slowing the pace and making the characters feel underdeveloped. Digressions concerning Laurie's family and personal life, including her love of her son and father, who travel with her to the shoot, don't help much and further slow the narrative. The budding romance between Laurie and Alex, though a lovely courtship, intervenes in the strangest moments, which only further sunders what fragile tension exists. Still, the genuinely gripping finish at least partially offsets the meandering storytelling. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The first-time collaboration of mystery grande dame Clark and thriller star Burke will definitely draw readers, though the book itself may disappoint both authors' fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2015

In this follow-up to The Cinderella Murder, the New York Times best-selling launch of the authors' "Under Suspicion" series, television producer Laurie Moran returns to investigate another cold case for her risky new show: the disappearance, five years ago, of Amanda Pierce on her wedding day. A reputedly less-than-peachy bride-to-be and the former fiance's marriage to one of the bridesmaids make for complications.

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