Product Description

Maggie Nesbitt is depressed beyond telling. She’d had a little too much to drink at a party a couple months back and wound up in a motel with a young man vacationing from Ireland. Now she’s pregnant and she’s reasonably sure her TV newsman husband, who’d had the snip, snip operation years earlier, because he’d wanted no children, won’t understand.

While she’s shopping for dinner a couple rough looking strangers mistake her for somebody else. One of them said something about seeing her picture in the paper. Her interest piqued, she goes home and goes through all the back papers her husband had been saving in the garage and sure enough she sees her photo, only the woman on the page has a different. name She’s called Margo, not Maggie and Margo had been the name of the twin sister she’d always believed had perished when she was an infant.

Excited she looks her up in the phone book and miraculously she’s listed. Maggie hot foots it over to Margo’s, runs into her twin’s ex who is a piece of work, he wants to take Jasmine, Margo’s daughter for the weekend, the daughter doesn’t want to go. Both mistake Maggie for Margo. Maggie bluffs, protects the girl and chases away the bad ex-hubby.

Jasmine, who has been staying with a sitter, is surprised to see her mother, as she’s supposed to be on a religious retreat. Maggie plays along, Jasmine goes next door to play. Maggie turns on the tube and sees that Newsman Nick Nesbitt’s wife had been found murdered. Maggie gasps, that’s her, she’s dead, but of course she’s not, it was the twin.

How?

Why?

Turns out the rough guys in the store had been hired to kill Maggie’s sister because she’d witnessed a murder. When they saw Maggie in the store they followed her and as luck would have it, the twins paths almost crossed. The killers grabbed and killed Margo and now Maggie who doesn’t know this yet is presented with a unique opportunity. She can have her baby and save Jasmine from going to live with her horrible father, all she has to do is step into Margo’s live, become her twin.

However when Maggie who is now Margo, shows up the next day not dead, the killers are very, very upset.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #637115 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

From the Publisher
Have you ever been so depressed, not suicidal, because suicide is stupid, but so depressed that you’d do anything to get out of your life, if you only could? Have you ever wanted anything badly enough to walk away from it all?

Maggie Nesbitt has. She’s pregnant and her famous newsman husband isn’t the father of her child. She’s going to get an abortion, but not before she gets good and drunk. Drinking is bad for the baby, but so what? It’s going to be dead in a few days anyway. However a chance encounter in a supermarket leads her to believe the twin she’d thought had died in infancy may still be alive, and living not far away. Curiosity gets her out of the doldrums, she hops a bus, goes to her sister’s and through a seemingly unconnected series of events winds up stepping into her twin’s life.

She did this because while at her sister’s, she sees on the news that Nick Nesbitt’s wife had been found murdered, her nude body discovered behind a gay bar. She quickly figures out that someone has killed her twin, thinking it was her, or maybe it was random, either way, she now has a way out of her problem. She can keep her baby. All she has to do is takeover her twin’s life.

Easier said than done. Her sister had a daughter, friend’s that knew her, an ex-husband and a brand new fiancé, plus a killer after her, because unknown to Maggie, the killer wasn’t after her, he was after her twin, and when he finds out the woman he killed is still walking, talking and breathing, he’s not very happy.

Ken Douglas has written a woman in pearl thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat as you read the night away. Or if you have a long flight, DEAD RINGER will cut it short.

From the Inside Flap
Maggie Nesbitt is pregnant and depressed, because her husband isn’t the father of her unborn child. She’s thinking about abortion, when she’s attacked on the beach. She barely gets away, then gets the shock of her life the next morning when she sees that she has been killed on the news and that her nude body had been dumped in the trash behind a beachside bar.

She finds out the body behind the bar is the twin sister she’d been told had died when she was two weeks old. She also learns her twin was divorced from a horrid man and that she had an eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine.

Maggie, showing a bump on her head she got while getting away from her attackers, claims partial amnesia and steps into her dead twin’s life. This way she can have her baby, give it a home, and save Jasmine from having to go and live with her father. But she doesn’t know her twin saw someone do murder.

And now that someone thinks he killed the wrong woman.

About the Author
My name is Ken Douglas and I’m an underpaid writer, so underpaid that I have to do my own bio here. I write thrillers and suspense stories. I’ve been doing it for the last ten years, ever since my wife Vesta and I sold everything we had and bought a boat. We didn’t really understand the sailing part, had never done it before, but heck we’d raced cars across the Australian desert going real fast, so how hard could boating be, after all they only go between four and ten miles per hour, slower sometimes.

We bought a big old raceboat, sixty feet and named it "Great White Wonder," after that first Bob Dylan bootleg. The boat was run down and ready for scrap, but we put two years of hard labor into it in Trinidad and made it new again. Then we hired someone to teach us how to sail it and we spent the next eight years cruising up and down the Caribbean island chain till the money ran out.

Below please see a brief description of my books, then I’ll write a little more about me.

DESPERATION MOON: Sara Hackett must save two little girls from dangerous kidnappers, but she doesn’t have the money to pay the ransom.

DEAD RINGER: Maggie steps into her dead twin’s life to get out of a bad marriage only to find that her twin had been murdered and now the killer is after her.

RUNNING SCARED: Joey Sapphire wakes next to a dead man and now the killer is after her. She is in trouble and she has nowhere to run.

TANGERINE DREAM, written with Jack Stewart: Incest, death, tragedy, betrayal and teenage homosexual love, I don’t know how, but somehow it all works out in this different kind of thriller.

DIAMOND SKY, written with Jack Stewart: Beth Shannon’s husband stole conflict diamonds from the Russian Mafia before he died. Now they're after Beth, because they think she knows where they are. And she does, only she doesn’t know it.

There you have it, can’t get much shorter than that.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we sold the boat because the money ran out? Take a chance on one of my books, I think you’ll get caught up by the stories and you’ll be helping Vesta and me in our quest to save up enough money so that we can buy another boat, smaller this time, and go cruising again.

The sea, sometimes it’s cold out there, sometimes it’s scary, sometimes it’s fun, sometimes hard, sometimes it’s terrifying, but it’s never boring.

Best regards,

Ken Douglas

Customer Reviews

Super Nifty Birthday Present
My twin sister gave me DEAD RINGER for my birthday (January 8th) and I read it in one day. I was intrigued with the idea of a twin taking over her sister's identity, it made for a super story line. When we were growing up (we're twenty-four now) we often traded places, confusing our parents, siblings, friends and even teachers. In fact I was so horrible at math in college that Leeann took Trig and Calc 1A for me and I did PoliSci 1A and B for her and nobody ever figured it out. Whoops, that's supposed to be a secret. Anyway, because of our past experiences at fooling people, I know it's possible for one twin to pretend she's the other with nobody being the wiser.

I especially liked how Maggie, the heroine of the story, got to keep her baby and how she dumped her twin's awful fiancee and how she told off that minister who had been controlling her dead sister's life. I also liked that fact that Maggie was such a strong character who didn't go whining to some guy when she got in trouble. She solved her own problems, fought her own battles, though her faithful friend Gordon, the gay ex-FBI agent, did fight along with her. He was another super-super character.

This was a book full of characters you'd like to get to know better, people you wouldn't mind inviting home for dinner. Even the despicable Horace Nighthyde was sort of sympathetic in a pathetic kind of way. My sister bought the book for me because it was about twins, but even so, it turned out to be one of the best presents I'd ever received, because I read a lot and now, thanks to her, I've discovered a wonderful new writer.

Would You Walk Away from Your Life if You Could?
This was a delicious book for me to read because I have a twin sister and have on occasion fantasied about what it would be like if I could step into her life. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm very satisfied with my lot, but my sister is single, hugely successful and can buy anything she wants and gosh darn it, don'tcha know, rich is better. However, in the case of Mr. Douglas' intriguing thriller, Maggie didn't take over Margo's life for the money. She did get quite a bit though. She got a new Porshe too, which she immediately wrecked, but she was being chased by a very bad guy in a BMW, so I guess I can forgive her for driving the car into the drink.

Poor Maggie, she had an affair, got pregnant and her husband had been fixed, so there was no way she could hope to pass it off as his, not that she would have. She wants to keep the baby, wants to keep her marriage too, but it's not possible to do both, so she settles on abortion, but before she does it, she finds out about her twin sister Margo who she thought had died in infancy. Excited, she rushes to meet her, but as luck would have it there was a killer after Margo and he'd spotted Maggie by mistake. He follows her to Margo's and as the twins paths almost cross, he abducts and kills Margo, the woman who'd witnessed him carry out a contract hit in a convenience store, then he dumps the body behind a bar Maggie had been in only the night before and the police mistake the dead Margo for Maggie. Whew!

Now the way is clear for Maggie to take over her sister's life, which she does, but not only does she inherit all of Margo's money and her shiny new Porshe, but she gets a Bible Belting Fiancee, a horrid ex-husband, an inquisitive daughter and a killer who is very unhappy that she's come back to life and still wants her dead.

Add to the mix an ex-hero cop who is the mastermind behind our killer, our killer's half wit brother and his epileptic mother, a fast shooting, gay ex-FBI agent, a crooked congressman and a neighbor who used to be a violent feminist, but now owns a beauty shop and you have one heck of a thriller peopled with believable characters you'll never forget, at least I know I won't.

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

Twins separated at birth
This is another story about someone finding a twin they had not known about. In this case, a woman fleeing from a cheating husband and marital problems steps into the life of an identical twin after the twin is murdered. It turns out the twin had money - lots of money along with a young daughter. Some people have to be let into the secret, but it is a closely guarded secret.

The thugs who killed her sister are thrown into confusion. The more they try to solve their problem, the greater the complexity of the problem. Various characters are drawn into the plot including the dead woman's mother, a couple of police officers willing to mete out their own justice, a neighbor of the dead woman, and two mysterious men under the pier who seem to move about silently like smoke, or maybe like guardian angels (one never knows).

Maggie finds an odd assortment of allies as she takes on a new life. You may think some of the black hats are going to walk away free, but don't be too sure. Some people are tougher than they look, especially women who feel their children are threatened.

I disagree with the publisher's assessment that stories are hard to write. I have found that stories are relatively easy to write, but very hard to get published. Everyone wants to be a writer, and editors are very selective. I do agree with the assessment that reading novels is better than watching TV.