Avon, $5.99, ISBN 0-380-81551-6
Contemporary Romance, 2001

Oh my poor head. Leaving Lonely Town is a sequel to It Happened at Midnight, and as usual the cast is large enough to fill the bus to Goo-goo Land. With a labyrinthine plot I need to make notes to keep track off, I think I will echo Billy Joel in We Didn’t Start the Fire when he shrieks, “I can’t take it anymore!”

Let’s see. The plot. Forensic officer Sable Barclay is stunned when one day, while testing the DNA of the hair belonging to a long-ago kidnapped and still missing Langtry girl, she discovers that the DNA matches her own. Puzzled, she packs up and heads off to Wyoming, where the Langtry girl hailed from. Along the way, she discovers more clues that she may be the missing baby in question. Is she the long lost Sable Langtry? She is adopted, after all…

She and her paleontologist buddy Eden – two stereotypes on a road trip, yeah baby! – reach Wyoming where the gloomy, depressive, hard-hearted walking, ticking Prozac pills that are the Langtry clans await. Sable falls for the hard-loving-no-marrying ranch foreman Culley Blackwolf, while Eden studies the boner of tortured hard-loving-harder-groaning Rourke Langtry. Sprawling like the maze of Crete are the labyrinth of family secrets, lies, betrayal, evil psycho women we call our mommies and grannies, and lookee here, the author also wants to continue the story of the miserable couples in It Happened at Midnight (gee, so they haven’t killed themselves like I expected!). Who’s her father? Who’s his father? Who’s the bad guy? Who’s the good guy? Who’s this? Who’s that? What’s this? What’s that? Why’s this? Why’s that? Where is she running now? Why did she…? Why did he…? Why is everybody talking like over-dramatic bad stage actors and actresses?

Everyone’s hurt! Everyone’s betrayed before! Everyone’s afraid! Everyone’s angry! Everyone is sad!

I can’t take this.

Leaving Lonely Town – it’s originally a song title, right? – is pretty prophetic a title. Excuse me, I see people leaving this town like lemmings at Judgement Day. Hey, wait up!