First published 1994
Mary Ashley is a college professor from Kansas, not a politician. When the President taps her as the new U.S. ambassador to Romania, she packs up her two children and steps into a world she was never trained to navigate. Bucharest in the Cold War is a city of surveillance, secrets, and smiling men who mean harm. Back in Washington, powerful figures inside the government are already moving against her. In Paris, the danger follows her across borders. Mary has no idea who her enemies are or how many of them there are. She only knows that the threats are real and that her children are targets too. She has to figure out who to trust before someone she has already trusted gets her killed. Sidney Sheldon builds the tension across three cities and two continents, keeping Mary in motion while the walls close in. At its center the book is about an ordinary woman who refuses to be destroyed by extraordinary forces working in the dark.
Genres: suspense, adult-fiction, thriller, mystery-thriller, espionage, political-thriller
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, gripping, suspenseful, tense
Tropes: conspiracy-thriller, fish-out-of-water, protective-parent, woman-in-danger
Setting: Kansas, Romania, Bucharest, Washington, Paris
Period: Cold War
419 pages · Paperback · HarperCollins
Content warnings: death, violence