The Winner by David Baldacci 1997, Hardcover: items on eBay.com

Publisher's Note
LuAnn Tyler is a twenty-year-old unwed mother in Rikersville, Georgia, a woman who can use her fists as well as her wits, a woman striving to escape an abusive relationship and a life of endless poverty. Suddenly, under the pretense of giving her a decent job, a mysterious Mr. Jackson makes her an offer he thinks no one can refuse: a guarantee to be the next winner of the $100 million national lottery. But LuAnn won't do it. At first. Then, less than twenty-four hours later, she is fighting for her life and running from a false murder charge. Jackson's offer - and its condition that she leave the country forever - seems to be her only hope. She accepts his proposition and the new life the unlimited wealth buys her and her infant daughter. Ten years later, LuAnn disobeys Jackson and secretly returns to the United States, where she is still wanted for murder. There, she meets Matthew Riggs, a man whose origins are as murky and troublesome as her own. LuAnn's life is shattered when a canny reporter smelling a scam in the national lottery picks up her trail, and Jackson, a seemingly omniscient master of impersonation, comes to punish her for disobeying him. At the same time, the FBI is set on her track when investigators suspect someone may have fixed the lottery. While the hunters close in for the kill, LuAnn finds herself turning to Matt Riggs for help, but he may be just another predator in her life.

When LuAnn Tyler is asked to be part of a crooked lottery scheme, she refuses, even though it would mean millions of dollars. But when she is framed for murder, the frightened single mother is forced to participate. Ten years later she has become a wealthy woman determined to live a normal life. But it will take more than money to escape the attentions of the FBI who may want her for murder, and the dangerous man from her past who wants to kill her...if she doesn't stop him first.

Industry Reviews
Absolute Power. Total Control. And now The Winner: Baldacci doesn't settle for second best. Here, his heroine, who gets rich after being forced to participate in a fixed lottery, is wanted for murder.
Stefanatos

The title doesn't refer to Baldacci but it could, as the author of last year's not-so-hot Total Control sets a wildfire of a thriller that rivals his Absolute Power for suspense, excitement and bankability. The premise is another Baldacci blockbuster: the national lottery has been fixed 12 times by a man who demands access to his handpicked winners' windfalls and who now, to protect his secret, aims to kill the last and lovable illicit winner, LuAnn Tyler. To save her baby girl from a hardscrabble life, Bright, beautiful and dirt poor LuAnn accepts the offer of the mystery man known as Jackson to reap nearly $100 million in a forthcoming drawing. Jackson is a marvelous mad hatter of a villain who's not only a modern Moriarity but a master of disguise; his ability to shift from old to young, male to female springs many of the novel's twists and enhances its made-for-the-movies air. Because LuAnn is accidentally implicated in a murder just before the rigged drawing, Jackson orders her to flee the country forever. After 10 years of wealthy, lonesome exile she returns, however. When Jackson finds out, he goes for the jugular. The ensuing mayhem draws in press, the FBI and the White House, sees LuAnn herself shift from hunted to huntress (with help from a romantic interest), and will have readers gasping. Baldacci recycles himself a bit here he played the mom-and-daughter in-peril gambit in Total Control, and the sympathetic outlaw ploy in Absolute Power and, again, his prose is workaday and his plotting mercilessly melodramatic. His strong characters and sheer Grisham-like exuberance unlike many thrillers, this is flat-out fun to read will, however, thrust the novel toward the top of the charts. 500,000 first printing. BOMC main selection; Time Warner Audio. (Dec.) FYI: Tri-Star will release Total Control as a CBS miniseries in 1998.
Lopate

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