BOOK OF THE WEEK: Archives

Romance Readers Book Of The Week
September 19, 2005
ARCHIVED FEATURE

THE LONELY GIRLS CLUB
Suzanne Forster
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Format: Mass Market Paperback

Buy This Book:
Available at Suzanne Forster's Website

FROM THE BACK COVER:

At an exclusive California prep school, four young girls form a bond that will endure over two decades -- a bond built on secrets, scandal and a murder ... a bond about to be broken.

Mattie, a federal judge ... Breeze, a wealthy entrepreneur ... and Jane, the first lady of the United States, have all enjoyed a meteoric rise to success since their days at the Rowe Academy for Girls. But now the truth behind the suicide of their friend Ivy and the murder of their headmistress twenty years ago is no longer safely hidden.

The man imprisoned for the murder has been exonerated, and a true crime reporter is relentlessly pursuing a loose thread in the decades-old cover-up, one that threatens to unravel the women's pact of silence. But none of them anticipated the twisted depths of the secrets about to be exposed -- or how the truth could shatter all of their lives.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS BOOK:

4 Stars ~
Twenty years ago, the murder of the headmistress of Rowe Academy was a closed case. But now, the man convicted has been cleared and released, and crime writer Jameson Cross is determined to find the real killer.

His investigation leads him to three prominent women: federal judge Mattie Smith, businesswoman Breeze Wheeler and the First Lady of the United States, Jane Dunbar Mantle. Once known as the Lonely Girls Club, the three women share many secrets about their Academy days—any one of which could destroy their lives. Even the truth, which can be found on a missing videotape, is potentially dangerous—and possibly lethal.

Only a writer of Forster's skill could take the reader to the dark places in this story. This book isn't for the squeamish, certainly, but those with a high tolerance for violence and the more unpleasant aspects of human behavior will no doubt be fascinated by it.
--Catherine Witmer, www.romantictimes.com 

For a tale with high emotional impact and suspense, check out THE LONELY GIRLS CLUB.
--Patricia Green, Romance Reviews Today, www.romrevtoday.com

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Acclaimed author Suzanne Forster is living proof of Shakespeare’s maxim that the uses of adversity are sweet. Suzanne’s writing career began by accident. Literally. A car accident ended her dreams for a career in clinical psychology. During her recovery, she began writing to fill the hours, and before she was well enough to return to graduate school, she’d sold her first book and launched a new career.

Since then Suzanne has written twenty-plus novels and been the recipient of countless awards, including The National Readers’ Choice Award for Shameless, her mainstream debut. She’s received recognition for outstanding sales from Waldenbooks and Bookrak, and her twelfth novel, Child Bride, was that year’s top-selling Bantam series romance. Her romantic thriller, The Morning After, hit top spots on several bestseller lists, including the New York Times extended, USA TODAY, Waldenbooks, Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Suzanne has a Master’s Degree in Writing Popular Fiction, and she teaches and lectures frequently. Her seminars on Women's Contemporary Fiction at UCLA and UC Riverside were rated outstanding, and her most requested workshop, "The High-Concept Synopsis," is based on personal experience. Her breakout novel, Shameless, sold on a synopsis that triggered a bidding war and garnered her a six-figure contract.

Suzanne has received considerable media attention, including a feature segment on Extra, NBC's news and entertainment magazine, and an Emmy Award–winning "Special Report" on CBS Channel 23 News. Her many print appearances include the L.A. Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Redbook and Orange Coast Magazine.

READ AN EXCERPT:

Rowe Academy for Girls
Tiburon, California
Winter, 1980

The cotton camisole was too small. It acted like a binder to reduce her breasts to a tidy A cup. She slipped on a crisp white blouse and buttoned it up, leaving just a bit of milky throat exposed. Her ticking pulse could still be seen.

She could see his reflection too, watching her, totally absorbed in her ritual before the full-length mirror. Dressing for sex had always struck her as odd, but this was the way he liked it. Was he caught yet? Ensnared by his own racing heart?

The pleats of her plaid stitch-down skirt just reached her knees. The skirt opened like a kilt, and the flap flew as she twirled on one foot. She was joyous now, child-like. Her dark French-braided hair danced with pleasure. Surely he could see that she was transformed. She didn’t look in the mirror as she bent to draw knee-high cotton stockings on over her bare feet. She preferred silk, but everything had to be totally authentic. No makeup was allowed, only freshly pinched cheeks and lip gloss. No jewelry. That would be trashy.

He was no longer in the mirror. She turned, hoping to see him lying on the bed, awaiting her, fully aroused and trembling with shame. That was how she controlled him, and it had to go right today or their relationship wouldn’t survive. She had something important to tell him. But hope faded as she saw him standing by the window, looking down at the courtyard three stories below her bell tower apartment, where her finishing school students took breaks between classes.

The academy, a U-shaped structure, designed in the manner of the ivy-covered Victorian castles of old England, was more than a school, it was her family home, donated through a foundation to the cause of education when her grandmother died, fifteen years ago. Right now it felt like her prison.

She joined him, but he didn’t acknowledge her presence. He was transfixed by an exquisite creature with cascading red curls and the pensive smile of a Sistine Madonna. The young woman stood near the fountain in the courtyard’s center, seemingly unaware of the mist from the water that hovered around her like a communion veil. Brisk winter weather had kept most of the students indoors today, but this one must have wanted to be alone with her thoughts. "Is it her then?" the headmistress asked him. "One of my girls? You want a child?"

Her bitterness could have drawn blood, but he seemed oblivious.

"She isn’t a child," he pointed out. "She’s fully grown, but still in the first flush of womanhood. She’s fresh and lovely, untouched."

Rage foamed into the headmistress’s throat. Not yet thirty, and she was being tossed aside for a simpering virgin? After everything she’d done for him? She had planned her whole life around him, but there was no way she could tell him her news now. He would think her ridiculous.

Instantly her anger turned cold. She was sub-zero, molten ice. He would get what he wanted, and he would pay the price for it. He was a powerful man. He could easily ruin her. But he had crossed the line, and they both knew it.

Yes, he would get what he wanted. Yes, he would pay.

* * * * *

San Quentin Prison
Summer 2005

Haze shrouded the sun, turning it into a silvery moon as the main gate clanged open. A tall, thin ghost of a human being hovered in the entrance. He took a few steps, although it looked more like floating than walking. The dark suit he wore swung loosely on his fence-slat frame, and his heavy blue-black hair fell forward, shuttering the light from his eyes. What could be seen of his face was all jaw bones and cartilage. He was a death row inmate, but he was walking free, the only prisoner scheduled for release that day.

He didn’t seem aware of the road ahead, only of the medieval fortress behind him. After a few steps, he stopped and turned, swaying like a spindly, overgrown tree. He raised one hand and curled back all of his fingers except the middle one. It might have been less an act of defiance than a test of his constitutional rights. Was he really a free man? A car door banged in the distance, and he ducked, clearly expecting to be shot.

Another man stood across the road by a gleaming black SUV with darkened windows. Jameson Cross was as tall as the ex-con, and his jet hair had the same shimmering blue lights, but that was where the resemblance ended. In every other way than the physical, the two men were profoundly different. They could have been alter egos.

"William Broud? Can I give you a ride?" Cross stepped forward cautiously, offering his hand—and his car. "It’s a long walk to civilization."

Broud did not look up or acknowledge Cross in any way. Cross could have been invisible, except that he knew the other man had heard him. This was deeply deliberate. William Broud had been ignoring Jameson Cross since before Broud went to prison. They weren’t enemies. It was worse than that.

Cross began to walk with him. "I’d like to talk to you about the finishing school murders. You’re going to need a job now that you’re out, and I can pay you for your time."

Cross was a best-selling true crime writer, and his stake in this case went beyond the book he might write. Broud had been a gardener and handyman at an exclusive finishing school in Tiburon. He’d spent twenty-three years in prison, most of it on death row for the murder of Millicent Rowe, the school’s headmistress. But Broud had been recently exonerated by DNA evidence, and Cross didn’t understand the man’s reluctance to talk about an injustice of that magnitude. When they’d arrested him, he’d professed his innocence, babbling about conspiracies and cover-ups, a sex ring involving the students. But he’d had drugs in his possession, a record of priors, and B negative blood had been
found at the scene, which was his type.

"Who are the lonely girls?" Cross asked. "You claimed they killed the headmistress. Were they students at the finishing school?"

Broud continued walking, head bowed, face buried in hair.

Frustration burned through Cross. This had to stop. "You rotted in jail for twenty-two years and no one cared," he said. "They would have let you die. Whoever did it should pay for putting you through that hell."

Black hair flew, exposing Broud’s tortured visage. He glared at Cross. "You’re right. No one cared. Why should I? Leave me alone."

"It doesn’t have to be like that. Billy—"

"Don’t call me that," Broud ground out savagely. "Billy’s gone. He doesn’t exist anymore."

Cross came to a halt, watching Broud lumber away. If he’d continued, they might well have come to blows. Billy Broud might be gone, he thought, but if zombies existed, this man could have been one. His face was a howling Halloween skull. He’d been spared execution, but any part of him that was human was dead. Only the pupils of his eyes burned with terrifying life. And Jameson Cross would not soon forget them.

Cross was certain that Broud knew who did this to him, but for some reason, he wasn’t talking. Perhaps he wanted to exact his own revenge. Nevertheless, it was a story that Cross intended to tell. He’d just made that decision. His suspicions alone would create headlines.

It would be interesting to see who ran for cover when he fired the first shot. If he was right, he was hunting big game. His murder suspects operated at the highest levels of government, jurisprudence and business. And even more interesting, they were all women.

ROMANCE READERS CHATS WITH THE AUTHOR:

Do you know more about your characters' backgrounds than the readers ever learn in your books? With your background in psychology, do you prepare detailed profiles of your characters before you even begin to write?

Those two questions go right to the heart of what is for me one of the most challenging aspects of writing novels—and that is tailoring the character details to best meet the dramatic needs of the story. I do extensive brainstorming and background work while I’m developing my characters, and I almost always know a great deal more about them than will ever be revealed in the book. Fortunately or not, all of the minutiae that come with being human are fascinating to me, especially the characters’ flaws and foibles, and I have to be careful not to overload the reader. This may mean mercilessly cutting details that I love, but that don’t further the plot and could bog it down. It’s torture, but better me than the reader!

I suspect it’s my curiosity about the human condition that led me into psychology in the first place, and that’s what compels me to deeply explore character motivation and conflict. I just love trying to figure out why people do what they do, especially when what they’re doing seems counter-productive and counter-intuitive. People are mysteries and mysteries cry out to be solved, which is really the basis of everything I write about. And perhaps because of my psychology background, I find it easiest to explore the characters’ psyches and hardest to get their physical details. I know them inside long before I know them outside, if that makes sense. Sometimes I avoid trying to come up with the details of their appearance for the entire first draft. I wait for them to come to me, and it often feels as if the character is revealing him or herself to me one physical trait at a time. If I try to force these details they never seem to work, and I have to change them anyway.

How quickly do you write a 75,000-word novel, and how many revisions, after critiques, cold reads, etc., before you send it to your editor?

The 75K novels I’ve done have all been series romances. My single titles are at least 100k or longer. When I started, I wrote short sensual series romance exclusively, and each book took me four to six months. My wake-up call came when I realized how quickly and painlessly other writers were penning their series romances. Suddenly it hit me that my perfectionist tendencies might be slowing me down.

Perfectionism is congenital in my family, I’m afraid, but I’ve since learned if you want to be that other P word—Prolific—you have to kill off the perfectionist, or at least tie her up, gag her, and stash her in a closet for the entire duration of the first draft. Drug her if need be! You can bring her out for brief intervals during the second and final draft, but otherwise, she has to be contained like a virulent disease. <g>

I used to do four to five drafts or more. Now I do two drafts and one final clean up. I also do detailed story proposals before I start the book, and then I roughly block out each chapter, scene by scene, before I write it. Between cutting down the drafts and strait-jacketing the perfectionist, I can now write two to three chapters a week and finish a series book in about eight weeks, although that depends a lot on how my life is going at the time.

It’s a big improvement in my output, and I don’t think the stories have suffered. In fact, I’m told that some of them have benefited. In my case, less really is more.

What started you writing, and what besides writing motivates you?

I read avidly from earliest childhood, but I didn’t do much in the way of creative writing, unless it was for a school assignment. I loved to make up stories in my head, and I created my own collection of paper dolls, complete with extensive wardrobes. My plan way back then was to design clothing, but it’s probably telling that I made up elaborate stories about the lives and loves of my dolls—grand costume dramas that involved every aspect of their existence. Now I wonder if the paper dolls weren’t just another way to explore what I really love doing.

The bio on my website explains that I began writing by accident. Literally. I had a car accident that ended my dreams of a career in clinical psychology. The recovery was long and difficult, and I was forced to drop out of the doctoral program that I’d been working toward for what seemed like most of my life. It was truly a low point for me, but writing became my therapy during the extended recovery, and before I was well enough to return to grad school, I’d actually sold a book and launched a new career.
Now, I write full-time, a rewarding and consuming profession that allows me to explore the human drama in an entirely different way than I originally planned. My stories keep me very busy and fulfilled, but I recently returned to graduate school and completed a Masters degree in Writing Popular Fiction, and I have some plans cooking to complete my doctorate in psychology as well. We’ll see what the Fates have in store!

THE LONELY GIRLS CLUB is fairly dark, what with the emotional and physical abuse initially perpetrated against the girls. Would you call THE LONELY GIRLS CLUB your darkest work to date? What were the particular challenges you faced in conceiving and telling this story?

My answer may come as a surprise, but I never actually thought of the book as dark when I was writing it. Of course, I knew that it couldn’t be anything but dark thematically, given that the back story deals with an essentially evil headmistress of an exclusive finishing school, who’s involved in the sexual exploitation of her students, but I was very caught up in the way the lonely girls survived the abuse and ultimately triumphed over it, so to me it was always a story of survival and even transcendence, I suppose. I also loved the plan the girls hatched to deal with the headmistress, and how in the front story, twenty years later, all three go on to have diverse, fascinating, and fulfilling lies . . . until their past revisits them in the form of the unsolved murder of the headmistress, for which they become the prime suspects.

Jameson is not the usual cut and dried romance hero; instead he's carefully crafted in shades of gray. Did you originally envision him as Mattie's anti-hero, or even a possible suspect?

For some reason, when I write a book, everyone is a suspect. I really enjoy keeping all the balls in the air as long as possible, and I rarely know for sure who did it, whatever “it” is, until the end. I always have a strong suspect in mind, but I often find that it’s not necessarily who I thought it would be, and if I’m surprised by the revelation of the antagonist, then the reader probably will be, too. At least, that’s my theory. In this case, though, I saw Mattie and the girls as suspects, and Jameson as very much their nemesis, and, of course, Mattie’s in particular.

In THE LONELY GIRLS’ CLUB’s first incarnation, Mattie and Jameson came to trust each other much earlier in the story, which created an entirely different emotional dynamic between them that felt a little forced, so on my editor’s advice, I kept them at odds, yet still very much attracted, and we found that it really spiked the sexual tension and at the same time, felt like a more realistic and emotionally honest relationship.

Is there a possibility of the elusive Breeze being revisited in the future for her own story, or are you finished with the "lonely girls"?

I hadn't actually thought about bringing Breeze back for another go, but it’s not a bad idea. As the three main characters developed in my mind and on the pages, I knew there was something missing in Breeze. She was much too savvy and enterprising to simply run a glitzy international spa, but the dimensions in her character didn’t really come to me until well into the second draft, and quite honestly, I think she just got tired of being ignored. It was one of those situations writers talk about where characters take over the story. In this case, Breeze began to write her own dialogue, things that had to do with her “clients” and went well beyond the scope of what I had planned—and darn if she wasn’t persistent enough that I finally had to stop and figure out what the girl was up to.

What are you working on now? Will it be another romantic suspense novel published with Mira?

I’m currently hard at work on the launch book for the new Spice imprint, which will be out in February 2006, so the next Mira is still very much in the idea stages. It will definitely be romantic suspense, however, and if they go for the idea that’s cooking, it will be about a woman accused of her own murder.