Synopsis of Fatal Impressions

 

     Cousins Coleman Greene and Dinah Greene Hathaway, introduced in RESTRIKE, are tackling new challenges as FATAL IMPRESSIONS opens. Coleman has acquired another magazine, First Home, to publish along with her first love, ArtSmart. Dinah's print gallery has moved to a different part of Manhattan, near other art galleries, and is struggling with higher costs. A contract to buy and install prints in the offices of a prestigious consulting firm could guarantee the Greene Gallery's future.

     But Dinah's new clients don't live up to their reputation. The product of a recent merger, Davidson, Douglas, Danbury & Weeks is a dark, unhappy place of cutthroat competition and culture clash. Dinah's primary contact, the firm's "art curator," Patti Sue Victor, is hostile. The firm's founding partner bequeathed his art collection to a small museum in upstate New York, but fewer

 
 

than half the pieces reached their final destination. Dinah's disagreeable work environment turns deadly, when Dinah discovers the corpse of a DDD&W employee crushed beneath the firm's CEO's fallen bookcases. Dinah, first on the scene, is also first on the police list of suspects. Dinah's husband, Jonathan Hathaway, strives to get Dinah out of the frame, but someone is working against his efforts. When another DDD&W employee is killed, Dinah is again the prime suspect.

      Meanwhile, Coleman finds that keeping her publishing company will be harder than acquiring it, when ArtSmart and First Home become targets of a hostile takeover attempt. But much as her magazines mean to Coleman, her cousin Dinah is more important, and Coleman must put her business interests on hold while she struggles to help Jonathan clear Dinah's name.

     Like its predecessor, RESTRIKE, FATAL IMPRESSIONS combines compelling suspense with sharp insights into the high-priced worlds of New York business and art collecting with Coleman and Dinah as sleuths and guides.