COLD PARADISE

Welcome back to Stone Barrington’s world of felony glamour, where the pantry’s always well stocked with beluga caviar, 9-mm. ammo, quality sex, and perps with more lives than Wile E. Coyote.

The leading retread is Allison Manning, the ex-lover Stone last saw when he was getting her acquitted of killing her husband Paul (Dead in the Water, 1997). When Stone jets down from New York to find the mysterious “Liz” who entranced computer billionaire Thad Shames in Palm Beach—a job that would hardly be worthy of a man as well-dressed as Stone if Thad weren’t dangling a fat block of stock from his latest IPO—of course she turns out to be Allison with red hair. There’s a problem, though: Paul still seems to be alive too, and gunning for the wife who cleared $12 million on their conspiracy to fake his death. Allison’s convinced that she saw Paul only recently—or did she? Glimpsing the supposed Paul again, she seems a lot less certain that graphic designer Paul Bartlett really is him. While Stone’s struggling to protect Allison, or Liz, from Paul and from the insurance company she defrauded while making sure his latest inamorata, Shames chef Callie Hodges, doesn’t get jealous of his past with her, complications from earlier seasons keep popping up again like summer reruns. Stone’s former true love Arrington Calder makes a strategic appearance just in time to make Callie jealous of her, and Stone’s estranged wife Dolce Bianchi, the Mafia bride from hell (L.A. Dead, 2000), is rumored to be on her way too. Will Thad’s nuptials be broken up by murderous Paul, glamorous Arrington, or Dolce—armed, as in Stone’s nightmares, with two brandy snifters and a pistol?

Environmentalists rejoice: This product contains 80% recycled characters and storylines. And since nobody important gets killed, they’ll all be available for next season’s installment, just in case you misplace your copy of this one.