"action packed and fast-paced Barrington tale"
Stone Barrington is a bit hung over from last night's
shocker that his lover is leaving him to marry someone
else. So when John Bartholomew asks for his help with
retrieving his niece, Erica Burroughs, from her boyfriend,
cocaine smuggler Lance Cabot, he accepts. It does help to
say yes when the client offers to cover all expenses,
reasonable or not, in London for Stone to bring Erica home
and get Cabot arrested. However, the simple job turns quite complicated when Stone
not only learns that Erica has no uncle, but there is no
John Burroughs. Erica introduces Stone to her sister and
the trio attends a party tossed by painter Sarah
Buckminster, Stone's former lover. As Sarah's fiancé
falls to his death, John and Lance accuse one another of
being a vicious spy performing criminal acts. Stone
believes both are rogue agents trying to manipulate him as
he struggles with whom do you trust. The latest Stone Barrington tale, THE SHORT FOREVER, feels
as if Stuart Woods could not decide between a who-done-it
and an espionage thriller. The story line is action packed
and fast-paced, perhaps the speediest of the Barrington
tales, but keeps shifting gears as the subplots never
smoothly lock in place. The mystery elements feel
comfortable, however the spy subplot seems out of sorts for
Stone. Still series fans will find Stone, who must have
scored more often than Wilt, retains his likable quality as
he tries to remain alive amidst the most murky a case he
ever has worked. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted March 2, 2002
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In The Short Forever, the unflappable Stone Barrington
comes face to face with two men whose lives are wrapped in
shadows and lies-and who both still feel a sting of betrayal
they can never forget. Stone's new client, John Bartholomew, asks him to fly to
London in search of a young woman whom he suspects has taken
up with a mysterious character. Bartholomew asks Stone to
see what he can find to discredit the man, Cabot, which
seems a simple enough task, and Stone is eager to spend time
in London and with his friend Sarah Buckminster. What Stone
finds is more bizarre than he had expected. The woman in
question isn't related to Bartholomew in quite the way he
had implied. And it appears that Bartholomew and Cabot, who
once worked together on a secretive assignment, now have
very different versions of what went wrong. When Stone
himself is implicated in a shocking double murder, he and
his partner, Dino, know they have stepped into a strange
case unlike any other.
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