Snow White and Rose Red
by Ed McBain
Shimmering blonde hair framing an exquisite pale face. Deep green eyes,
a generous pale face. Matthew Hope took one look and fell instantly in
love. Sarah Whittaker had everything: stunning good looks, youth, money,
social standing. Everything, that is, but her freedom. Because Sarah
Whittaker was currently residing, against her inclinations and her will,
in Knott's Retreat -- familiarly known to the residents of Florida's
booming West Coast as Nut's Retreat. In the State of Florida, County of
Calusa, Sarah Whittaker was a certified paranoid schizophrenic. That's
what the doctors said. It's what her widowed mother said. It's what the
court-ordered psychiatric commitment papers said. It was not what Sarah
Whittaker said -- and that was why she had called Matthew Hope. Would
he, she asked, act as her attorney and fight for her freedom -- not to
mention fighting for the $650,000 left her by her father and now
controlled by her mother. Hope might have lost his heart, but he hadn't
lost his wits. He probed Sarah's story of a mother driven by hate to
confine her only child to a mental institution and decided she was telling
the truth. He took the case. And in so doing was led into a hall of
mirrors in which reality and delusion blurred into murder, mutilation,
and the greatest danger Hope had ever known.
Snow White and Rose Red
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