THE WRONG MAN begins with a chapter aimed straight at vacationers. This is so even if Kit Finn, the 35-year-old protagonist of the piece, is visiting the Florida Keys on a combination business/pleasure trip. The business part is at the behest of a client of Kit’s boutique interior design firm in Manhattan; the pleasure part is...well, restful enough, but the implication is that Kit is bored. That will change, rest assured.

Kate White is, among other things, the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, so you sort of know what’s coming, at least at first. Kit --- solid, dependable and, yes, perhaps somewhat predictable --- decides to do something a bit dangerous (her term) on her last day in the Keys. She isn’t sure what that entails but begins to get an idea when she literally bumps into a good-looking stranger at her hotel after breakfast. When Kit encounters him later on, she assists him with some gift shopping. The man, who introduces himself as Matt Healy, invites her to dinner. The meal is good, the dessert is dangerous, and their time together lasts all night. The following morning, Healy, who lives in New York, asks to see Kit again later in the week and gives her his business card with his home address.

"White’s target audience will have a lot of fun with the book, and, as an added bonus, she gets into the heads of interior designers and reveals the thought processes that lead them to do what they do so well."

A few days later, Kit arrives at the apartment. Healy answers the door. He is not, however, the “Matt Healy” --- or, as Kit initially referred to him, “Mr. X” --- who she met and bedded in the Keys. The real Matt Healy seems as perplexed and non-plussed as she is. He is particularly concerned because he is a portfolio manager for a hedge fund and is worried that the apparent identity theft will cause some blowback at his company. Kit is totally at a loss, but that’s not the worst of it. A death that is anything but accidental rocks her world, and when her apartment and business offices are burglarized, she knows there is much more going on than a one-night stand that left her feeling used.

Then, inexplicably, Kit’s Mr. X reappears. He has an explanation for what has occurred, but not everything adds up. If Mr. X isn’t lying, then somebody is. All Kit knows is that she is being drawn against her will into a situation that she doesn’t understand and, ironically enough, is very dangerous to her in a way that she never considered weeks ago and hundreds of miles away in Florida.

As one might gather, there is quite a tantalizing mystery at the heart of THE WRONG MAN, one that takes a good deal of the book to sort out and requires just a bit of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. White’s target audience will have a lot of fun with the book, and, as an added bonus, she gets into the heads of interior designers and reveals the thought processes that lead them to do what they do so well. THE WRONG MAN should be a beach vacation companion to anyone who wants to have fun but also wishes to stay busy enough to keep out of trouble. Or not.