2007: #57 – Windmills of the Gods (Sidney Sheldon)

Book #57 was Windmills of the Gods by Sidney Sheldon. The back of the book reads:

America’s best-selling novelist has created the breathtaking story of a woman trapped by a diabolical international conspiracy. The action races from the President’s Oval Office to the hot Latino beat of Buenos Aires to the romance of Paris and Rome to the shadowy dangers of Bucharest.

Caught in the web of this chilling tale is Mary Ashley, a bright young professor of Eastern European studies at Kansas State University and mother of two, who is appointed the United States ambassador to an iron Curtain country. Even before she takes up her post she is marked for destruction by unseen and powerful enemies, including Angel, an accomplished assassin who has never failed to carry out a murder contract.

Alone and a stranger in a foreign country, Mary Ashley finds herself involved with two dynamic men: Mike Slade, a tough career diplomat who is her deputy chief of mission; and Louis Desforges, a doctor attached to the French embassy. But soon she comes to believe that one of them is out to kill her.

In Windmills of the Gods Sidney Sheldon has written a gripping drama with compelling characters that remain forever etched in the reader’s mind. It is a tale of a woman’s heroism against an unknown terror spanning the whole arena of international intrigue.

I didn’t like this one as much as The Sky is Falling. I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy in the politics at the beginning, and I didn’t really find Mary to be a compelling character. I was expecting someone strong and smart, and once she got to Washington she was turned into, well, a naive hayseed. I didn’t buy it — you don’t get anywhere in academia by being naive. There were a couple of interesting twists, but if this were the first Sidney Sheldon I read, I wouldn’t seek out any more.

Page count: 434 | Word count: 91,303

2006 – The Weatherman (Steve Thayer)
2005 – To the Nines (Janet Evanovich)