Never Look Back » (Reprint)

Linda Lael Miller is the author of seventy historical and contemporary romance novels, many of which are set in the American West. She was awarded the Romance Writers of America's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

A hungry attraction. A hidden enemy.
Devoted defense lawyer Clare Westbrook, used to working for others, can now call the shots on her own terms. A multi-million-dollar inheritance from the father she never knew has allowed her to start her own practice. And with her teenage niece, Emma, whom she's raised as a daughter, on a school trip to Europe, Clare has been able to focus on turning a storefront in a tough Phoenix neighborhood into the legal firm of her dreams and offering her services to the troubled community. But just as she opens for business, explosive shots take out her street-level windows -- and nearly take her life. Someone clearly has targeted Clare, though she doesn't know who or why. All she knows is she must surrender to Tony Sonterra's protection if she wants to survive....

Sonterra has designs on a career move to the FBI -- and on rekindling his scorching, no-strings-attached affair with Clare. But can the man who sparks her passion be trusted with her life? Or is someone using Clare, the one person Tony has dared to get close to, to get to him?

Publishers Weekly

Picking up where Miller left off in Don't Look Now, this sequel sends its heroine-the hard-boiled, whip-smart and very pretty Clare Westbrook-through hell and high water in a bumpy plot designed to showcase Clare's plucky resolve even in the most macabre moments. After setting up a pro bono lawyer's office in an unsavory part of Phoenix, Ariz., Clare receives some creepy visits from a schizophrenic patient of the psychiatrist next door, who spouts strange warnings about dolls. Then Clare finds the patient's body in her pool, discovers another neighbor murdered and stumbles upon mutilated dolls left in her path-and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Assuming the role of protector is Tony Sonterra, Clare's smoldering on-again, off-again lover. Clare's wry humor gives the novel some zing. "It's still early," she says, after Sonterra reassures her that no one is trying to kill her. After a while, though, the calamities lose shock value through sheer repetition, and the end of the novel is tangled in loose ends. As Clare ricochets from mishap to mating dance and back again, she too often leaves us behind, waiting for a defining moment to help make sense of it all. Agent, Irene Goodman. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.