Wow. As a big fan of Julie Garwood’s historical romances and her sure hand with characterization and dialogue, I have to admit to being shocked by the sad state of both in this lackluster release.

Why the extreme disappointment? Murder List is marred by a pedestrian and predictable plot, broad brush characterizations, stereotyped villains who all but hiss (though at least once of them actually does hiss), a perfect heroine whose only flaw seems to be a simmering resentment towards her overpowering brothers (each of whom has “future hero” all but tattooed on this forehead), and a hero who is little more than a generic cop stud muffin who falls in instant lust with our perfect heroine.

Hotel heiress Regan Madison is persuaded by her close friend Sophie (who has “future heroine” all but tattooed on her forehead) to participate in a truly half-baked scheme: Together with their third best friend Cordie (yup, same tattoo), they will attend a self-help seminar given by a sleazy con man guru they’re dead certain murdered a wealthy woman who had fallen under his spell. Once they’ve got the goods on him, aspiring newspaper reporter Sophie will then write the story and bask in all the glory.

With their plan set, the three start the investigative ball rolling by attending one of the sleazoid’s seminars where they are told to “cleanse” themselves of past hurts by writing a “murder list” of people who have harmed them in the past. When the list is burned, according to the guru, the burn-ee will be free of those past hurts and ready to start life anew. Whatever.

Though Regan dutifully makes up her list, she is unable to finish that oh-so-necessary burning phase due to her ringing cell phone. Call completed and deciding that it’s more than time to get the heck out of Dodge and leave the seminar, Regan – with list in hand – ventures alone to the dark parking lot. Stunningly, Regan’s walk to the car is interrupted when a mysterious man brutally attacks her. The resourceful heiress, however, somehow manages to get away, albeit sans murder list and cell phone.

As the reader knows and Regan doesn’t, there is, indeed, a man stalking her and, though his motives are mysterious, his deadly intentions are clear. But the cops don’t know that and the attack is brushed aside as a random mugging – that is until the names on Regan’s list suddenly start turning up dead. Since it’s not too far a leap to assume that the list-maker could also be a target, Detective Alec Buchanan is tapped to serve as her bodyguard.

Frankly, the mystery plot itself is average, brought down to slightly below that by the Lucy-and-Ethel and George-and-Kramer nature of the women’s lame-brained plan to bring down the guru. Still, since that plot line is largely dropped once the murder list thing gets going, I could get past that if I didn’t keep running into additional hurdles:

• Regan’s friend Sophie, we’re told, is currently an “advice columnist” at the newspaper but she really wants to be an investigative reporter. That kind of career path – “advice columnist” to star reporter – is straight out of series romances from the early 80’s and doesn’t bear even the slightest resemblance to reality.

• Big brother Aiden’s ruthlessly ambitious assistant Emily is a cardboard villain who delivers some truly howlingly funny bitchy lines. This chick, however, is also monumentally stupid since regularly cheesing off your boss’s spoiled and indulged baby sister doesn’t seem to me to be a real sound career plan.

• In the book’s prologue, little girl Regan is referred to on page 4 as “the five year-old” and on page 5 (the facing page, mind you) as a “six year-old”.

Add in the fact that the character development is more than a shade on the sketchy side and the book gets even tougher to navigate. Regan is Perfect (definitely with a capital P): Everyone loves her, she’s noble and kind (she heads up the family’s foundation), and, of course, she’s breathtakingly beautiful. As for Alec, I had the feeling that the author was relying on the reader’s previous knowledge of the Buchanan family to fill in the details. Since I haven’t read those books, he never even remotely moved past the generic stage for me. On the positive side, however, virtually all of my major issues with the book occurred in the story’s first half, with the result that the second was far less problem-filled. Even so, however, this second half still never rises above the level of an average to middling tale of romantic suspense.

Julie Garwood goes to a great deal of trouble here to set up Regan’s brothers as wealthy and successful guys yearning to star in their very own books and, to be honest, I think more of her attention was focused on setting up the sequels than in delivering a solid story here. Given the DIK status my AAR colleagues granted the earlier books in this series, I’ll certainly try Ms. Garwood’s romantic suspense books again, but I’m more than regretful that I picked this one to start.