Cold Paradise

Stone Barrington, attorney/private investigator with a large NY law firm, is a former NYPD detective. Thad Shames wants Stone to find the “spectacular” woman he met at a party the previous weekend. Her name was Liz, she was attractive, “retired” from marriage, and was seen boarding a plane for Palm Beach. It so happens, Thad, who is to launch a major internet IPO, has a home in Palm Beach complete with a two hundred and twenty-two foot yacht. The yacht will become Stone’s home while working on the investigation. While in Palm Beach Stone is surprised to meet a woman he thought was dead…During the story Stone meets a number of women, all current or former lovers. And brushes shoulders with the rich and famous of Palm Beach. The story with its descriptions of grandeur and sexual encounters became ridiculous and tedious. I won’t be looking for more in this series.

A Stone Barrington novel, Bill Eggers, the managing partner of Woodman & Weld, a extremely prestigious law firm that Stone is an associated with, is hired by billionaire Thad Shames to locate a women that he met at a house party in the Hampton's. Thad knows very little about this women other than her looks and her name, Liz, upon Stone's search to locate Liz, he comes to realize that she's an ex-lover of his and he is possible the father of her boy. Her past is filled with alaises, she shows up in St Mark on a yacht, stating that her husband died at sea and she threw his body overboard because it started to smell. The government of St Mark's doesn't buy her story and charge her with murder, but right before she's to be executed her husband reappears stopping her death. Their plan was to defaud the insurance company for her husband's death, now her husband, Paul Manning is on death row, waiting too be executed and now the plot thickens. A very enjoyable read, the pages kept flying by, action till the end, a type of "The Sting" ending.

I like listening to Dick Hill read books. That was the best part of this one.