by Elizabeth Lowell

William Morrow, June, 2003.
Hardcover, 400 pages.
ISBN: 0060504129
Subgenre: Romantic Suspense

Lacey Quinn has always puzzled her high society parents. Her passion is her art: she is a painter who makes her living selling collector's items from her tiny shop in Newport Beach, California. When Lacey hears that the famous painter Susa Donovan is going to be appearing at a local charity event, she takes her grandfather's paintings for Susa to see. Susa is impressed with the paintings and befriends Lacey. She also pushes Lacey to have the paintings professionally appraised, as the paintings remind Susa of famous California plein air impressionist painter named Lewis Martin. With the help of Susa's handsome bodyguard, Ian Lapstrake, who works for Rarities Unlimited, Ian and Lacey begin to investigate Lacey's grandfather, whose later work showed dark and disturbing images of death and horror. Soon, the paintings are attracting unwanted publicity and Lacey finds her life in danger. And the murders her grandfather painted appear to have really happened. Now Lacey and Ian must make sure that they stay alive, despite a killer's best efforts to make them disappear from the face of the planet.

Elizabeth Lowell always takes her readers to an interesting world: this time she enters the world of California plein air painting: the American Impressionism school of outdoor landscape paintings, which show California as it was before the onslaught of freeways, smog and strip malls. Against this backdrop, Ms. Lowell spins a riveting story of passion, revenge and murder. Lacey Quinn, the artist who never quite fit in with her society family is determined to prove that her deceased grandfather had real talent as a painter. But her impulsiveness gets her into a lot of trouble. It also throws her together with the charming and handsome Ian Lapstrake. The love scenes sizzle, the characters are memorable, and, best of all, we get to spend more time with Susa -- the indomitable and spirited matriarch of the Donovan family.

Die in Plain Sight is available for purchase on Amazon.com

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This review was published in the June-July, 2003 of The Internet Writing Journal.

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