| Micheline and Alex Sorel have what everyone considers the perfect marriage. Alex is a very successful lawyer, and Micheline is his lovely independently wealthy wife. Alex is suddenly called upon to represent Leon Camusot, an automotive manufacturer building a new plant in the interior of Mexico. But just when Alex is expected to return to France, he does not show up. Instead he sends his legal partner to Micheline to ask for a separation.
Micheline is beside herself in confusion and remorse. It is inconceivable Alex would do such a thing and she has no way of contacting him. She also learns from Leon Camusot that the Mexican plant was built four years before and Alex is not representing him. She begins to hear rumors that Alex is involved with a former lover, a German prostitute named Lola Molinas. She resolves to go to Mexico to get to the bottom of this. Then curious things begin to happen. On the train to Paris, a strange, obese nun sits across from her and appears to be menacing her with a fruit knife. In Paris she encounters a blind man who asks her to help him find his apartment and then tries to seduce her. At the Houston terminal, a sinister man sits next to her reading a Mexican newspaper which has a photograph of Alex and Lola Molinas and which obviously Micheline was meant to see. Micheline has been given a letter of introduction to a very wealthy cattle rancher in Cuernevaca named Don Emiliano who agrees to help her. They tour the clubs in Mexico City in hopes of finding someone who may have seen Alex. At the last club they attend, a Spanish dancer, Carmilla Aguilar, surreptitiously drops a note in Micheline's lap telling her she has news of her husband. However, a few days later Aguilar is found strangled to death in the seedy hotel in which she lives down the hall from the same man who sat next to Micheline in Houston. Micheline flees from the scene then realizes she has left her shawl in Aguilar's room. In the meantime, Don Emiliano is doing his own investigating and tells her that Alex may be involved in drug trafficking, which Micheline absolutely refuses to believe. The police have found Micheline's shawl and she is wanted for questioning into the dancer's murder. But Don Emiliano agrees to drive her to the U.S. border where she can catch a plane back to Paris. Don Emiliano happens to have a Camusot, and along the way the Camusot overheats. Luckily they are near the Camusot plant, the one Alex was supposedly to set up when he left France. While waiting for Don Emiliano, Micheline glances out the window and sees Alex with a group of workmen just leaving the plant for the day. She rushes out to find him but by that time he has disappeared. She trails him to a sleazy motel in the outskirts of the town where instead of Alex she meets Lola Molinas who makes no bones about the fact that she and Alex have not only resumed their love affair but they are smuggling heroin into the U.S. No matter what she says, Micheline refuses to believe her. The following morning Lola has checked out and so has Alex. Micheline decides she has no alternative but to return to France. Since she and Don Emiliano have been separated, Micheline takes a bus to El Paso where she encounters a very pleasant young Swede who says he, too, is going to Paris. But just before they are to board the plane, she discovers that he is not who he is pretending to be and she flees for her life. She phones Don Emiliano who has returned to Cuernevaca. He tells her to go to L.A. and look up his friends in the meat-packing business and he will meet her at their home in Bel Air. Don Emiliano has fallen madly in love with her, and she cannot deny the attraction she feels for him. But before he arrives, she glimpses the same man who lived down the hall from Carmilla Aguilar parked outside the Bel Air mansion. Again she fears for her life. Don Emiliano bundles her into his car and begins to take her to Palmdale. Soon she discovers the truth about everything, that no one has been who they claimed they were and the real reason Alex has been estranged from her. | ||
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Plot & Themes Tone of story - suspenseful (sophisticated fear) Time/era of story: descript. of violence and chases - 10 % Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 20 % Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 50 % How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 20 % Crime Thriller Yes General Crime (including known murderer) Yes Who's the criminal enemy here? - drug dealers If story PRIMARILY about main chr. being hunted... - hunted by killer/stalker Is Romance a MAJOR (25%+) part of story? Yes Main Character Gender - Female Profession/status: Age: - 20's-30's Ethnicity/Race Main Adversary Profession/status: Motive of antagonist - power How sensitive is this character? Sense of humor - Cynical sense of humor Intelligence - Very much smarter than other characters Setting Europe Yes The Americas (not US): Yes Writing Style Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog |
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