I knew Christina Dodd was a well-known author, but there seemed to be plenty of reviews for her romances on AAR already, so I decided to read one of her suspense novels instead. Man, did I pick a doozy. There are a few aspects of Wrong Alibi that I enjoyed, but the plot is so bizarre that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was produced by an AI programmed for Maximum Wackiness. But let’s get started and you can see for yourself what I mean.

Eighteen-year-old Evelyn Jones has just been released from juvenile detention. Wanting to turn her life around, she accepts a job as an assistant to a reclusive man called Donald White. He’s the soul of generosity, since he even offers her a room in his house in Alaska. The house actually belongs to his friends the Jamesons, but since Mr. Jameson has been kidnapped by South American terrorists, Donald White is trying to raise money for his ransom. To that effect, he routinely gives Evelyn large amounts of cash to deposit in the bank under her own name.

But as you’ve probably guessed, Donald White isn’t the noble benefactor Evelyn thinks he is. Turns out he murdered Mrs. Jameson and her young son Timmy, and Evelyn discovers their bodies a few moments before the police raid the house. Since Donald White is nowhere to be found, no one besides her has ever seen him, and the Jamesons’ money is in the bank under her name, she’s convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. But don’t worry – while she’s being transported to prison, the vehicle crashes and she escapes. She’s presumed dead, and since she has a lot of facial injuries, a doctor provides surgery that gives her a completely new face. Taking the name Petie, she goes to work at the Midnight Sun Fishing Camp in Alaska so she can keep a roof over her head while she searches online for any news of Donald White.

Meanwhile, Zone Jameson escapes from his kidnappers and returns to the States only to find that his wife and son were murdered by Evelyn Jones, who was later killed in an accident. But years later, he gets an anonymous text saying “She’s alive”, so off he goes to Alaska to find her.

This is just the start of the surrealism. Donald White turns out to be dating Evelyn’s mother under the name Derrick Green (he always chooses a color as a last name) and he has had plastic surgery to change his face as well. There are four different people trying to kill Evelyn, including one who’s not only stupid enough to stand there yapping instead of shooting Evelyn dead, but who allows her to pick up a pot of steaming coffee. No prizes for guessing what happens next.

Oh, and Evelyn rescued Timmy’s teddy bear, which talks to her in an imaginary-friend way, but even this isn’t as unbelievable as what happens when Zone catches up with Evelyn. He’s planning to make her pay for his family’s deaths, but she manages to convince him that Donald White was responsible.

So they have sex.

There is no build-up to this at all. Half an hour after they meet and he calls her a bitch who killed his child, she’s feeling tingly as she thinks of kissing him, and then she puts her hand on his arm.

He looked at her hand on his arm, strong, warm, gripping him with the urgency of old injustice and new, startling desire.

He grabbed her arms and kissed her. Kissed her and kissed her and…

She sank into him.

They fell back on the bed.

They wrestled each other out of their clothes.

They had sex.

And this scene ends with Evelyn thinking that the teddy bear approves. I don’t even know what to say about that.

Wrong Alibi isn’t all bad. I liked Hawley Foggo, the owner of the fishing camp. He looks fat and slow but he’s smart and tougher than he seems, and he watches out for his employees. And I really liked Jeen Lee, a wealthy CEO who helps Evelyn out in repayment for a kindness. Jeen Lee is perfectly dressed, coolly serene, ruthless, and never more well-prepared than when she’s setting a dangerous plan into action. I would have loved to read more about her. Finally, Evelyn is half-Chinese-American and half Belorussian, and it’s always good to see more main characters of different ethnicities and national origins.

But these couldn’t make up for the utterly unhinged plot. I’m sure that Ms. Dodd is a good writer, but Wrong Alibi feels like someone throwing every possible idea at a wall without much concern for plausibility or logical connections. Unless you’ve always wanted to read a book where a teddy bear approves of two strangers having dull and unromantic sex in front of him, I can’t recommend this one.