RAINY DAY EXCERPTS: “BELIEVE ME”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, originally hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea and now hosted by I’d Rather Be at the Beach; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is a NetGalley ARC to be released on July 24:  Believe Me, by J.P. Delaney.  In this twisty psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Before, an actress plays both sides of a murder investigation.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Prologue) On the day of departure, guests are requested to vacate their rooms by noon.

By eleven o’clock the sixth floor of the Lexington Hotel has nearly emptied.  This is Midtown Manhattan, where even the tourists are on busy schedules of galleries and department stores and sights.

(Chapter One:  Five Days Earlier)

My friend hasn’t showed yet.

That’s what you’d think if you saw me here, perched at the bar of this corporate-cool New York hotel, trying to make my Virgin Mary last all evening.  Just another young professional waiting for her date.

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Teaser:  He steps forward and clasps Raoul by both shoulders, as if he’s congratulating him on the wittiness of his joke.  Then, abruptly, he brings his head down on Raoul’s nose.  Raoul crumples like a marionette and falls to the floor. (51%).

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Synopsis:  A struggling actor, a Brit in America without a green card, Claire needs work and money to survive. Then she gets both. But nothing like she expected.

Claire agrees to become a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers. Hired to entrap straying husbands, she must catch them on tape with their seductive propositions.

The rules? Never hit on the mark directly. Make it clear you’re available, but he has to proposition you, not the other way around. The firm is after evidence, not coercion. The innocent have nothing to hide.

Then the game changes.

When the wife of one of Claire’s targets is violently murdered, the cops are sure the husband is to blame. Desperate to catch him before he kills again, they enlist Claire to lure him into a confession.

Claire can do this. She’s brilliant at assuming a voice and an identity. For a woman who’s mastered the art of manipulation, how difficult could it be to tempt a killer into a trap?

But who is the decoy . . . and who is the prey?

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Would you keep reading?  I know that I’m intrigued.

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