Dana Evans, who made her first appearance in Sidney Sheldon's The Best Laid Plans, is aspunky, good-looking, young Washington TV journalist who's recently returned tothe nation's capital from the Balkans, where she adopted a handicapped warorphan who's having trouble adjusting to life in America. But that doesn't keepDana from following a story all over the world, from Washington to Aspen, Nice,Juneau, Dusseldorf, Rome, Brussels, Moscow, and Siberia. Each of these briefvisits is like a postcard--a local landmark or two, an interesting localrestaurant (at least in the European venues), and another piece of the puzzle,which has to do with why every member of a venerable, old Washington dynasty hasdied a violent death in the last year. It seems strange that in a media-savvycity like Washington, no one but Dana has noticed there's a pattern in the rapidextinction of the Winthrops or even whispered the words family vendetta.But that's why pretty, young girl TV reporters were invented, at least bySheldon. As Dana sets out to investigate the distinguished career of the Winthrop familypatriarch, her lover Jeff, a sports anchor at her station, is called away toadminister aid and succor to his former wife, a beautiful model who's realized,too little and too late, that she never should have dumped him. And Kemal, the12-year-old orphan, is being drugged by his baby sitter, who's in cahoots withat least one set of bad guys. Dana hasn't noticed how tractable thetemperamental boy has become recently because she's been dressing up like a two-bit Russian tramp to infiltrate a secret weapons base in Siberia... Do you hearthe words movie locations? But all's well that ends well, as it usuallydoes for Sheldon's heroines, and in the meantime you've learned where the five-star hotels are and what to order in a famous restaurant in Rome. A slick,commercial, slightly thin tale told by a craftsman of the genre.
