Memories Of Midnight

Patience, it seems, is a virtue - for now, 17 years after he apparently killed off Catherine Douglas in The Other Side of Midnight, Sheldon resurrects the sweet young thing for another run at happiness; but can she survive the traps laid by arch-villain Constantin Demeris, including a hit-man with her name on his knife? The predictable answer comes in the final spin of a loop-the-loop narrative that begins in July 1948 with Catherine waking up screaming in the small Greek Carmelite convent that's sheltered her for months. No longer able to bear her amnesia, she decides to seek psychiatric help - a move that prompts the Mother Superior to put in a quick call to billionaire Constantin Demeris, who in the guise of benefactor sets Catherine up in a swank apartment and job in London. Soon, Catherine remembers most of the plot of The Other Side of Midnight, how her unfaithful husband Larry and his mistress Noelle - former mistress to insanely jealous Demeris - tried to kill her. . .but she doesn't know that Demeris saved her from the burning boat and put her in the convent, then railroaded Larry and Noelle into being tried and executed for her alleged murder, and now plans to consummate his vengeance against Larry by having her killed after soiling her womanhood. Before Demeris can have his way with Catherine, however, he must dispose of a few annoyances - like his brilliant lawyer, who knows one secret too many; his abused wife and her tycoon brother, who try to frame him for the wife's suicide; and the wiseguy drug dealer who tries to blackmail him into smuggling heroine and priceless antiquities. They all twirl through the pages in many giddy subplots before Sheldon finally buckles down to flat-out suspense as Catherine - and the reader - must guess the identity of the assassin whom Demeris has sent to London to erase her, once and for all. The tangle of plots-within-plots trips up narrative drive, a rarity for Sheldon; but what a tangle it is: woven by twists and triple-crosses and reverse-stitch plotting, the enjoyable high-kitsch story, for those willing to overlook freeze-dried characters and Simple Simon prose, snares like a noose. (Kirkus Reviews)