The Ultimate Voyeur

Book excerpt: Is it a case of genius or criminal behavior? Have a brilliant innkeeper and her husband, a retired wildlife photographer, relied on genius or hidden cameras to reveal the love lives of their guests? These questions stir the controversy at the center of The Ultimate Voyeur. The owners of a Southern inn renowned for hospitality, Catherine Morgan and her husband are uncanny in their way of breaching barriers that people hide behind. Each chapter of The Ultimate Voyeur explores the innkeepers personal story and includes an episode involving guests. One guest, a talented scriptwriter, learns about the several hundred files compiled by Catherine and turns them with the innkeepers help into a massively popular TV program airing once a week. The episodes unfold the hidden love lives of the guests, extending from ingenious bedroom farce (The Jinx in High Jinks) to passionate romance (The Ten-Million-Dollar Wedding Ring) to something sinister (Whodunit to the Famous Mystery Writer?). The portrayal of the mystery writer strikes too close to home. Infuriated at his loss of privacy and sure that hidden cameras are to blame, he finds ambiguous evidence at the inn and plots his vengeance. In his wild retaliation that transcends his cardboard characters, the separate realms of life and art explode on contact to reveal the innkeepers inmost secrets. At the climax, one is led to fundamental insights into secrets at the heart of everybody and the chaos or compassion that results from their disclosure.