PRETEND YOU DON'T SEE HER

Just in time for Mother's Day, a fresh bouquet of imperiled female virtue from ever-reliable Clark, who ought to take out a patent. Planning to sell her late daughter Heather Landi's East Side apartment, ex-beauty queen Isabelle Waring makes an appointment with realtor Lacey Farrell to check the place out. But when Isabelle finds and reads Heather's journal in the apartment, she refuses to sell to the promising client Lacey's got waiting in the next room. Too late: The client, who's really a hit man looking for the journal, shoots Isabelle, who only has time before she dies to beg Lacey to read the journal and turn it over to Heather's father, gruff restaurateur Jimmy Landi. So Lacey makes a copy of the journal for Jimmy, then reads it herself before taking it to the police. And when she finally does turn the journal over to the authorities, it doesn't do any good; first the original journal and then some crucial pages from Jimmy's copy disappear from police custody. By this time, the police are treating Lacey like some kind of criminal even as the hit man begins stalking her. The US Attorney relocates Lacey to Minneapolis under the Witness Protection Program, but things are no better there: Lacey's lonely, her mother back in New York keeps blurting out hints of Lacey's location to exactly the plausible male intimates veteran Clark-watchers will duly have noted as the most likely threats to Lacey's safety, and the hit man hasn't lost interest either. Innocence unprotected, cops who actually sound like cops, and an implacable enemy with the momentum of a Metroliner. Even if the final revelation of the hit man's employer is weightless, Clark, by concentrating on what she does best—heavy-breathing menace as the hit man's footfalls echo ever louder—has produced her most successful tale since Remember Me (1994)—six books ago. (First printing of 1.1 million; Literary Guild main selection; author tour)