IMPULSE

A reporter makes time to investigate her precarious paternal roots—in another banal and unconvincing romantic adventure from Coulter (False Pretenses, 1988). Discovering her comatose mother's diaries, rich and beautiful journalist Rafaella Holland uncovers the truth of her conception—the spoiling of her helpless virgin mother by her deceitful, slippery, already married father, a man Rafaella has never met. Leaving her stepfather at home puzzling over the mysterious circumstances of her mother's injury, Rafaella jets to the Caribbean to assuage her mother's pain by getting the dirt on her estranged father. She poses lamely as his admiring potential biographer. And not only does daddy take the bait, but he takes her in, enabling Rafaella to document his crooked arms-dealing with Iran. While pumping for information, she also finds herself engaged in steamy beach sex with Marcus O'Sullivan, an island thug with secrets of his own. As Rafaella uses her prowess in martial arts to fend off several near-misses with deadly snakes and a sabotaged helicopter, she drop-kicks, back-flips, and karate-chops her way into her father's inner sanctum of greed. Finally, in a desperately bungled attempt at a James Bondian finale, Rafaella avenges her mother's past—and embarks on a romantic beginning of her own. An Electra complex gone awry, this daughter's exuberant search for her father fumbles amateurishly toward the finish line.