The Chase: A Novel
Great destinies are never for the faint-hearted  in Brenda Joyce's romantic thrillers, and never has that  been more true than inThe Chase, the tale of a  50-year-old horror and its shocking legacy for an  innocent woman. Busy, beautiful Claire Hayden, wife of a  prominent San Francisco attorney, heiress to a tidy  fortune, and fundraiser for numerous pet causes, watches  her superficially secure life unravel during her  husband's 40th-birthday party. Not only does Claire  decide in the midst of festivities that she wants a  divorce, but she discovers her preoccupied spouse  gruesomely murdered, her assets evaporated, and a  handsome stranger igniting her repressed sexual  passion.Faced with dark, new challenges, Claire toughens up in  the gales of a multigenerational mystery, including the  nightmarish possibility that her own father has been an  assassin since the 1940s. Crucial to the story is  Claire's ticklish crime-solving partnership with sexy  Nazi-hunter Ian Marshall; unfortunately, their love-hate,  bicker-flirt relationship quickly becomes monotonous. Far  better is the tragic, evocative subplot concerning the  marriage of a poor, orthodox Jew and a Christian  aristocrat in pre-World War II Britain. InThe  Chase, the past always lurks, like a killer biding  his time, behind the enigmas of one's life.--Tom  Keogh