MIDNIGHT IN RUBY BAYOU

The last volume in romancer Lowell’s gem tetralogy (Pearl Cove, 1999, etc.) recycles pretty much the same successful story for the fourth time.

Faith Donovan, jewelry-designing sister of Seattle’s gem-trading Donovan clan, has been commissioned to turn 13 rare Burmese rubies newly come into her inventory into a necklace that will become her best friend’s wedding present after she takes it to Savannah to crown her booth at a jewelry expo. Little do Faith and her overly protective big brothers know that the rubies have been stolen from a necklace at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg—along with a 20-carat carved ruby called the Heart of Midnight. That's the one being sought by Russian thugs who would be pleased to torture and murder Faith to get it back—if only she had it. Archer, her eldest brother, agrees to insure the necklace if she’ll agree to have Owen Walker guard her “like a second skin” until she delivers it to the Montegeaus. Walker, a tough old country boy with hot lapis-lazuli eyes who’s just lost his younger brother on a ruby-hunting jaunt to Afghanistan, is afraid that he’s doomed to fail anyone who loves and depends on him. For her part, Faith has just dumped her loser boyfriend Tony, who’s convinced her that she’s sexually unresponsive. While Lowell ladles on the full southern gothic treatment—gators, ghosts, alcohol, incest—Walker follows Faith to Savannah and then to Ruby Bayou in South Carolina, where he was born, carrying the necklace in a pocket jostling his own family jewels, and eventually proving Tony sumptuously wrong as he recovers the Heart of Midnight, slays the Russian dragons on Faith’s tail, and helps to uncover a Montegeau family secret.

As in earlier entries, Lowell lards her yarn with jewelry lore. Series alumnae will feel as comfortable around Harry Winston as they do in the bedroom.