The Book

Now in Paperback!

Available May 2009!

“A writerly page-turner… deft pacing keeps the action moving and the reader guessing.  Listfield ensures no character is above suspicion, and in the end, no one is without blame.” – Publishers Weekly

Best Intentions tells the story of four college friends whose reunion stirs old desires and grudges with fatal results. In just twenty-four hours, everything Lisa Barkley had been certain of—job, husband, best friend, “the intrinsic netting of my life”—is suddenly flimsy, insubstantial. Everything she had taken for granted “now seems up for grabs.”

Now age 39, Lisa and Sam were college sweethearts who seem to have settled into a comfortable marriage. Living in Manhattan and raising a pair of pre-teen daughters, the couple is feeling the financial strain of the current economic downturn. Both careers are in jeopardy as they struggle to send two kids to an elite private school. Surrounded by families steeped in Upper East Side wealth, Lisa often feels like her family is “in their world on a visa.” Far more distressing is a marital malaise that Lisa can’t quite put her finger on. Her nagging fear, one that she can’t quite confront, is that Sam might be having an affair.

Lisa unloads her anxieties in weekly breakfasts with her best friend Deirdre, a college friend who remains single but involved in an intense on-again-off-again relationship. Deirdre ends the affair suddenly when her former college flame, Jack, rekindles their romance. When the two couples meet to celebrate Jack’s fortieth birthday, the stage is set for an explosive series of discoveries.

When Deirdre is found dead in her apartment, Lisa has no alibi, Deirdre’s ex-boyfriend is out of the country, and Jack’s estranged wife claims he was with her at the time of the murder.  And where was Lisa’s husband?  Who has motive? Who’s telling the truth? As Lisa examines what she thinks she knows about her husband, her best friend, and her life as she knew it, Best Intentions delivers a reminder of how “the past is never really over. Our interpretation of it may shift like a kaleidoscope, it may inform us or lead us astray, it may bring comfort or delusion, an excuse to hate or a reason to love… But one way or another, it is always with us.”

Available May 5, 2009. Pre-Order the Novel from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

You can see more about the murder, the characters, and the book at the
whokilleddeirdre@wordpress.com