Author Description

As Gayle Lynds's third solo mystery-thriller opens, hotshot D.C. attorney Beth Convey is sewing up the biggest case of her career. It's the case that'll lead to a partnership in the hoity-toity Washington law firm of Edwards and Bonnet and the one that will cement her professional relationship with a soon-to-be enormously wealthy woman. Unfortunately for Beth, it turns out to be the case that kills her. Shocked back to life, Beth makes do with her faulty ticker until Mikhail Ogust's heart, having no use for his recently deceased body, takes up residence in Convey's chest. And that is where the fun begins. Before you can say "glasnost," Beth is suffering violent nightmares starring murderous Russian individuals, craving vodka, and hungering after snacks more appropriate to the Volga than the Potomac. She's also realized an appreciation and understanding of high-powered weaponry.Meanwhile Jeff Hammond, a disgraced former FBI agent-cum-star reporter for The Washington Post, is desperately seeking a Russian defector, while agent Eli Kirkhart, Hammond's former partner, is chasing him. In short order, and in differing degrees of partnership, Convey, Hammond, and Kirkhart are knee-deep in duplicitous intrigue both foreign and domestic, bands of well-trained vigilantes bent on governmental overthrow, disguise-wearing spies worthy of Mission Impossible, and, finally, a plot to assassinate a pair of presidents.Aside from a spate of dialogue (particularly Hammond's and Kirkhart's) that reads like a stubbed toe, Mesmerized barrels right along and carries with it enough successful plot twists to satisfy most anyone's craving for spy vs. spy. Lynds's previous mysteries are Masquerade, Mosaic, and 2000's The Hades Factor, written with Robert Ludlum. --Michael Hudson