Lynds, Gayle: Masquerade

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The protagonist of Gayle Lynds' thriller Masquerade has lost her memory. Unable to recall even her name, she knows only as much of her past as her caretaker Gordon tells her: she is his fiancee, Liz Sansborough, a retired CIA agent who has been living under cover as a journalist and who is being targeted by one of the world's deadliest assassins, the Carnivore. Liz's reactions when under attack, she finds, are indeed those of a trained operative, but her occasional near memories don't correspond with what she's been told. Her hunt for her identity takes Liz away from Gordon's grasp, finally, and into the thick of a dangerous game of international intrigue in which identifying the bad guys is hard, and outrunning them even harder.

Masquerade, if not unputdownable, is a decent thriller with transparent prose and a likeable protagonist (who figures also in Lynds' more recent novel The Coil). The book unfortunately ends on a disappointing note, with a final chapter that strains credibility, but I would nonetheless enjoy reading more from this author.