TITLE: If Tomorrow Comes
AUTHOR: Sidney Sheldon
GENRE: Crime Fiction
PUBLISHED: 1985
ISBN: 0-446-35742-1
RATING: ★★★★☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon, iBookStore
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review:
DESCRIPTION: It was the Mafia against her and yet she stood tall… If Tomorrow Comes is the story of Tracy Whitney, young, beautiful, intelligent, she is about to marry into wealth and glamour. But the fates turn and she is caught up with the Mafia, conned into prison, abandoned by her fiancé. Down but not at all out, she survives and emerges from her savage ordeal – determined to avenge those who have destroyed her life. She is determined to go anywhere, do anything but only one man can challenge her – he’s handsome, persuasive and every bit as daring. Only one man can stop her – an evil genius whose only hope of salvation is in Tracy’s destruction…
REVIEW: Wow! That was my reaction after finishing this book, just WOW! The master of suspense delivers yet again. This book is fast paced, intricately plotted and just spectacular.
The very beginning of the story hooked me. The story begins with a phone conversation between Tracy and her mother Doris Whitney, who lives in New Orleans and takes care of the business set up by her deceased husband. Tracy tells her mother about her planned marriage with a businessman, Charles Stanhope III. Doris commits suicide after the conversation. Just shakes you up! Kept me turning pages for sure. Tracy is notified about it by a Lieutenant of the New Orleans police department. Upon arriving at New Orleans, Tracy becomes aware of the circumstances that led to her mother's suicide. She learns that Joe Romano, the main assistant of New Orleans' mafia leader Anthony Orsatti, had framed her mother into a legal case relating to fraud—Doris didn't have the money to fight the case and decided to commit suicide.
Tracy is enraged. She decides to take matters into her own hands. She buys a gun and goes to Romano’s to force him to confess. He tries to placate her by offering her a drink but then snatches the gun from Tracy and tries to rape her. In the scuffle, she shoots him. Thinking it was a fatal hit, she panics. She calls an ambulance and then flees to the airport. Turns out, the bullet had only wounded Joe and he has her arrested for attempted murder and also stealing a valuable painting from his house.
Tracy is assigned an attorney named Perry Pope who, to her ignorance, works for the mafia. Pope convinces her to plead guilty in court before Judge Lawrence (who is also secretly a mafia man) and promises that she'll be given only a three-month prison sentence. She follows his advice, and realizes in court that it was all a setup by Orsatti and Romano to destroy her — Lawrence sentences her to 15 years of incarceration in Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Her fiancé Charles doesn't give her a chance to let her explain her version of the incident. She is left alone, with an unborn child inside her forced to go through sexual harassment and violence in prison. It is there that the title comes from,
“She was going to make them pay… Tomorrow, she thought. If tomorrow comes.”
Eventually, Tracy becomes the nanny for the prison warden's young daughter, a job that leads to her release from jail. After coming out, she cunningly sets up distrust among Romano, Perry Pope and Orsatti, and frames Judge Lawrence in Russia over spying charges, thus ruining Anthony Orsatti's empire.
Take that, big boys!
Tracy, while looking for employment, comes across a New York City jewelry store owner. What she later realizes is that he is also a fencer of stolen jewels. He helps her make some fast money in a jewel heist. Then comes in the hero Jeff Stevens, irresistible, masterful, conman. He is mesmerized by Tracy.
Tracy Whitney was without doubt the most beautiful woman Jeff Stevens had ever seen. And clever.
He cheats her out of the loot but she is pretty nifty too. She cons it right back.
Not long after, Tracy travels to England and is introduced to Gunther Hartog, a world-class fence for valuable stolen property. Thus begins her life as one of the world's cleverest criminals. Tracy pursues some brilliant con schemes filled with humor and ingenuity all over Europe — such as stealing jewelry from an actress on the Orient Express, valuable painting from a museum, reselling a gem to a jeweler for much higher than it’s worth, etc. Even though she might seem heartless, Sidney Sheldon doesn’t let you feel that for long. At one point, she introspects,
I’ve gone from being an innocent, naïve victim to a… what? A thief – that’s what… No. An avenger. That’s what I’ve become.
She consoles herself with the thought that the universe made mistakes; she was just setting things straight, punishing the greedy, immoral.
The Interpol issues alerts all over Europe in search of - as they perceive it - a gang of con-women. Only Daniel Cooper, a plain-looking sociopath and insurance investigator, seems capable of matching Tracy's brilliance; although he never manages to catch her red-handed. In the end, after having collected enough money to live a luxurious life, Tracy and Jeff plan to marry and live together in Brazil as law-abiding citizens.
A really absorbing read that will keep you at the edge of your seat. I give it 4 stars because I wasn’t satisfied with the ending, not because I want to take anything away from the twists that will amaze you.