HUSH

White shelves hard-used series heroine Bailey Weggins (Lethally Blond, 2007, etc.), who could certainly use a break, to create just as much havoc for another New York professional who wants to have it all, except for the corpse.

Now that Lake Warren’s estranged husband Jack has contested the joint-custody arrangements for their two children, it looks as if work is her only solace. So she throws herself into her job as a freelance marketing expert for the Park Avenue Fertility Center with redoubled energy. Unfortunately, she also throws herself into the bed of Dr. Mark Keaton, the come-hither consultant who’s just announced his intention of joining the firm. Lake wonders briefly how her ill-advised fling will sit with Jack’s lawyer but gives no thought to the possible repercussions if Mark gets stabbed to death while she’s catching a post-coital snooze on his balcony. Was the killer a jealous lover (evidently the jungles of Gotham are full of those), a Park Avenue client who thought she’d been the target of a monstrous fraud, or a colleague who’d filched the key to Mark’s apartment from nurse Maggie Donohue? Lake will have to follow the trail while she’s looking over one shoulder at the increasingly curious police and over the other at someone who seems bent on terrorizing or killing her.

Despite the menacing damsel-in-distress prologue, thriftily repeated verbatim in chapter 28, both the mystery and the killer are too lightweight to vex your sleep. Job No. 1 here is multiplying suspicions, not resolving them.