Criminal Seduction
Books / Hardcover
ISBN: 0525937404 / Publisher: Dutton Adult, September 1993
While covering the New York murder trial of Lenore, accused of killing her artist husband Bram Serian, midwesterner Owen Byrne fights a deep attraction to the accused, even as her involvement in the murder seems ever more unquestionable
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Author Owen Byrne has finally gotten his big break, one that gets him out of the Midwest for the first time in his life and onto the diamond-hard streets of New York. Byrne is to write a book about the murder of the decade - the slaying of Bram Serian, an internationally known artist. Serian's beautiful Asian wife, the mysterious, reclusive woman the press has dubbed the Black Widow, is the defendant. Now going to trial, the case is a prosecutor's dream, a defense attorney's nightmare, and an unpublished author's baptism by fire. For the case combines the flames of death that cleansed the crime scene of essential evidence and the heat of an entanglement with a beautiful woman who is either a victim herself or a clever, cold-blooded killer.From Owen Byrne's very first day in the courtroom, he questions whether the accused, Lenore Serian, may be innocent despite a demeanor of aloof disdain that makes the press her enemy from the start. Eyewitnesses testify how she argued with her husband the night of the killing, how jealous she was of Serian's friends, and how she stood before his burning studio emotionless, not raising a cry for help or screaming in grief.But to Owen Byrne, the answer lies in the enigma of Bram Serian, who burst on the New York scene to become the darling of critics and the trendy avant-garde but kept his own past an impenetrable mystery. And who is Lenore Serian - the Asian refugee he married and kept isolated at the elaborate upstate New York farmhouse turned sybaritic retreat of turrets, hidden rooms, and sensual environments?Does Byrne really believe Lenore Serian's account of what happened that night, or her claim to be a woman desperately ignorant of her own identity? Or is he blinded by a fearful attraction to her that he is powerless to resist? And if she is innocent, does it mean another killer is still at large? Even before the verdict is in, Owen Byrne must call into question his judgment about good and evil. He has become a man caught in a nightmare of seduction, and in a trial that may only bury the truth forever.Skillfully weaving together past and present, Darian North has created a riveting thriller fueled with the seductive mysteries of love and death. Criminal Seduction gives sure testimony to a powerful new voice in fiction.
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