Lying with strangers

Review by Booklist Review

Taking a break from the Jack Swyteck legal-thriller series, Grippando offers up a stand-alone thriller that is as tautly constructed as his fine early novels, including as The Abduction (1998) and Found Money (1999). Peyton Shields is a resident at a Boston hospital. Driving home one night during a snowstorm, she is run off the road by another car. Authorities are treating the incident like an accident, but Peyton is convinced it was a deliberate attack. Problem is, she can't convince anyone else, not even her husband. When other, equally frightening things begin to happen to her, Peyton realizes she is alone against a nameless but exceedingly determined stalker. Grippando excels at the ordinary-person-in-extraordinary-circumstances story, and this one uses the premise expertly, building enough suspense to keep readers looking in dark corners and over their shoulders. Fans of the Swyteck series shouldn't look askance at this stand-alone; it's every bit as strong as the series novels. --David Pitt Copyright 2007 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Beautiful doctor Peyton Shields, head resident at Boston's Children's Hospital, and handsome lawyer husband Kevin Stokes would appear to have bright futures at the start of Grippando's stand-alone, which falls short of the standard of the author's Jack Swyteck series (When Darkness Falls, etc.). Mutual suspicions of infidelity and the fundamental failure of either partner to trust the other pave the way for the misunderstandings that make Peyton and Kevin ripe pickings for a psycho obsessed with Peyton. First Peyton nearly dies during a snowy accident that only she believes was deliberate. Then she and Kevin are ensnared in a web of escalating circumstances that drive them further apart. The soap opera plot will disappoint those expecting something meatier, and even the two lead characters play stock roles (the strong, independent woman; the dissatisfied, jealous husband). The result is a thriller that doesn't offer many thrills, even when Grippando takes the wraps off some late surprises. This title was first released in 2006 by Bookspan as a Madison Park Press book club exclusive. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

No one, including her suddenly hostile husband, believes that a stranger deliberately drove first-year medical resident Peyton Shields off the road one snowy night. But her life keeps getting scarier and scarier. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A mysterious stalker manipulates a beautiful doctor until she's suspected of murder in this well-plotted thriller. Peyton Shields deserves better. The top resident for pediatric medicine at a prestigious Boston hospital, this gorgeous blonde works ridiculous hours and still manages to coax unwilling young patients into giving up the occasional smile. But her lawyer husband, Kevin, resents the time she devotes to her career, not to mention the move to frigid New England the residency forced on him and the snooty law firm that gave him a job. Soon he's cheating. And even if he immediately regrets his one-night-stand, it couldn't have happened at a worse time. Peyton is reeling from a lawsuit, brought about when she fired a shot to defend a teenaged patient. And as she's trying to make amends, she's forced off an icy road into Jamaica Pond. As her marriage begins to crumble, an old flame makes a doomed reappearance, and before long, both she and Kevin are on trial for murder. The truth lies with enigmatic stalker Rudy. Evidently delusional, he believes that utterly oblivious women are giving him sexy "signals," but he's holding himself together enough to be quite resourceful: filching keys from a car valet, hiring mimes and just generally getting up to mischief in his doomed attempt to act as Peyton's savior. While some of the plotting is far-fetched, Grippando's latest keeps the action coming, with just enough justification to make sense of the wilder turns. (Peyton, for example, realizes she misspoke when she confesses at her deposition that she could shoot a person.) In a sly touch, Grippando (When Darkness Falls, 2007, etc.) makes the cheating husband an aspiring author who has penned a thriller about a woman accused of murder. An unlikely thriller with enough cleanly written action to keep readers engaged. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Lying with Strangers LP Chapter One Peyton Shields could feel it coming. no one had tipped her off. No neon lights were blinking. But her sixth sense was in high gear. Peyton was in her first year of residency in pediatric medicine at Children's Hospital, Boston, one of an elite thirty-seven interns chosen from premier medical schools around the world. She'd vaulted to the top through relentless drive, stellar academic credentials, and a mountain of debt to Harvard Medical School. Good instincts, too, were part of the successful package, and at the moment they were telling her that something strange lay ahead. She parked her car in the space marked Physician outside the North Shore clinic, about thirty miles north of Boston in the city of Haverhill. Peyton was at that stage of her professional training where pediatric residents spent three or four days each month at an outlying clinic to broaden their experience. Haverhill was somewhat of a plum as far as clinical assignments went, situated in the affluent Merrimack Valley. Driving out in any direction, you were virtually guaranteed to run smack into a quaint, three-hundred-year-old town whose 98 percent white population earned more than double the state's median annual income. Though not the most charming in the valley, the city was an interesting mix of one of the finest Queen Anne-style streetscapes in America and blue-collar housing that had grown from the once-prominent shoe industry. With roughly 10 percent of its population living below the poverty level, the routine medical needs of its Medicaid children were served primarily by the clinic. Today, that meant primarily by Peyton. "What are you two doing outside?" asked Peyton as she stepped out of the car. It was a fair question. Even though it was a sunny fifty-six degrees--a heat wave for late February--it was highly irregular for Felicia and Leticia Browning to be caught chitchatting outside the front door at nine-thirty in the morning. The clinic's two full-time nurses were identical twins with polar-opposite personalities. Felicia was the more serious sister and a frequent pain in the neck. "Power's out," said Leticia, giggling as usual. "That's weird. All the traffic lights were working on my way over here." "Cuz you was coming from the south," said Felicia. "Power's out from here north." "What happened?" "Earthquake," said Leticia. More giggles. "Very funny." "No joke," said Felicia. "We're on the southern edge of what they call the active zone, thirty miles north of Boston and on up to Clinton. Two dozen quakes in the last twenty-one years. Usually little bitty ones, like this." "How do you know all that?" "We'll always know more than you," said Felicia, only half-kidding. "We're nurses." Leticia pulled a battery-powered radio from her sister's coat pocket. "They just interviewed a Boston College seismologist on the air." "Shut up, fool," said Felicia. "Ah," said Peyton, seeing they really weren't yanking her chain. "I take it there's no backup generator for this place." Leticia just laughed. Her sister said, "Dr. Simons canceled his morning appointments and went home over an hour ago." Good ol' Doc Simons. He ran the clinic, but hands-on he was not. To him, carpe diem meant "seize the day off ." The three women looked at each other in silence, as if soliciting ideas on how to keep busy. Peyton was about to walk inside when a car sped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt. The driver's-side door flew open and a teenage girl jumped out with a baby in her arms. "Somebody--help my son!" She looked barely old enough to drive and sounded even younger. Peyton ran to her and gathered the baby in her arms. "How old is he?" "Twenty-one months," she said in a panicky voice. "His name's TJ. He got stuck with a needle." "Are you his mother?" "Yeah. My name's Grace." "Take him to Room A," said Felicia. "It's got plenty of sunlight." Peyton hurried inside, stepping carefully through the dimly lit hall. The baby's cry was weak, as if he'd wailed to the point of exhaustion. They slid the examination table closer to the window to take advantage of the streaming sunlight, then laid the boy on it. "Needle went in right there," said Grace, pointing at his leg. Felicia aimed a flashlight. Peyton noticed a minor puncture wound inside the thigh. "What kind of needle was it?" "Sewing needle. About an inch long." "Did you bring it with you?" "It's still in his leg." Peyton looked closely but still didn't see it. "You sure?" "The very tip was sticking out at first. I tried to work it out, you know, like a sliver. But it disappeared inside him." Leticia slipped a small blood-pressure cuff onto the boy's right arm and pumped it. "You're sure it was a sewing needle, child?" "What else would it be?" Felicia grabbed the girl's wrists and rolled up her sleeves. "Show me your arms." Grace resisted, but Felicia was much stronger. "I'm no druggy. Leave me alone." The arms were trackless, but Felicia wasn't finished. "You shoot between your toes, girl? Or is it your boyfriend who does the drugs and leaves his needles laying around?" "Nobody is on drugs, so just go to hell!" Peyton was about to side with the girl, but then she noticed the marks on the backs of her legs just below the hemline of her skirt. "Is that blood behind your knees?" Grace backed away. The nurse grabbed her and hiked up her skirt. The backs of her thighs were pockmarked with bloody needle holes. "What is going on here, child?" said Felicia. "My boyfriend did it." "Did what?" asked Peyton. "We got in a fight. He started jabbing me with this stick of his, so I grabbed TJ and ran out the door. He got TJ in the leg, and the needle broke off when I jerked away." "What kind of stick has a sewing needle on it?" "He made it himself. A broomstick with a needle on the end of it. He uses it when I jog." Lying with Strangers LP . Copyright © by James Grippando. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Lying with Strangers by James Grippando All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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