Have aliens abducted Karen Robards and left a changeling in her place? Surely the person who wrote this awful mess is not the Karen Robards who wrote Walking After Midnight, One Summer, and Heartbreaker. That Karen Robards wrote books with strong heroes and heroines and a good mix of action and romance. This book has none of that. The Senator’s Wife opens with a scene where a call girl who is participating in a sadomasochistic gang bang is anally raped, then killed when one of the participants gets too carried away. I almost lost my lunch.

The title character is Ronnie Honneker, the trophy wife of rich and powerful Senator Lewis Honneker. I hated her – no I loathed her. She is just too beautiful for words and reminds us of it as often as she can. At one point, she eats a piece of cake and thinks to herself that it would be months before she allowed herself anything that fattening again. God help us if she gets above a size six or worse, is caught without her makeup! Tom Quinlan is hired as a media consultant for the Honneker reelection campaign. Pretty little Ronnie has turned out to be a big political liability. Now, just because she is a rotten speaker, has an I’m better than you hicks attitude and considers any type of clothing that is not short, tight and floozy looking dowdy, she’s a liability?! Ronnie dear, tasteful does not equal dowdy.

Ronnie and Tom Quinlan lock horns immediately. She resents everything he asks her to do. Ronnie dear, you married a politician and now you’re angry at having to play a public role?! Poor baby. Scandal stalks the campaign when a tabloid newspaper comes up with a story about Senator Honneker’s affair with a prostitute. This necessitates much spin doctoring on the part of Tom and much whining and pouting on the part of Ronnie. Ronnie dear, when the campaign manager is asleep, you do not run out and get drunk and dance in a sleazy bar while wearing tight cutoffs and three inch heels, not if you want your husband to win the election and keep all that lovely money flowing in – that is why you married him, isn’t it?

Poor Ronnie is so unhappy she starts twitching her gorgeous little butt around while wearing a teeny tiny bikini and gets Tom all hot and bothered. Before long they are having quickies (and longies) all over the place and think they are getting away with it – until suddenly Senator Honneker turns up dead. His family (who all hate Ronnie) come forward with compromising pictures of her and Tom, and it looks like she will be indicted for murder.

The last third of the book, which revolves around solving the murder picked up speed and interest but it was just too late for me. I have never read a book with two such odious main characters – and they are supposed to be the hero and heroine!! Granted, Senator Honneker was a sleazebag, but Ronnie and Tom weren’t much better. Ronnie Honneker was an absolutely loathsome little bubble-brain with the morals of an alley cat, and as for Tom Quinlan – well here’s a man who divorced his first wife for adultery and now he is hitting the sheets with the wife of a man whom he admits has never been anything but kind and helpful to him. Boy, those two deserve each other! I give them three months. Ronnie dear, and Tom darling, I’d wish you good luck but I despise you both. Bye, bye and don’t let the door hit you on your perfect little butts on the way out. Oh yeah – you aliens – please bring the real Karen Robards back now.