If Tomorrow Comes Book Review

Tracy Whitney has a perfect life. She is intelligent and beautiful, has a good job and a wonderful fiance. But all this comes crashing down around her when her mother commits suicide because of a bad business deal. Wanting revenge, Tracy goes to the house of the man who was responsible for her mother's death, with the intention of threatening him. Her plan goes disastrously wrong, and she is sent to prison for attempted murder.

The book explores the horrors of life in prison as Tracy undergoes unendurable pain, humiliation and suffering in the hands of her fellow inmates. However, she soon learns to defend herself and, with the help of another prisoner, plans on breaking out of jail. She does get out, but not in the way she expected. Once out of prison, Tracy exacts revenge on all those who wronged her, and then hopes to continue with her life as it was before her imprisonment.

However, she soon learns that life is very difficult for an ex-convict. Nobody will hire her because of her past. She gets all sorts of odd jobs to make ends meet, but finally, after being wrongfully accused of stealing at her workplace, she decides that if the world is intent on treating her like a thief, then she may as well become a thief.

And so begins Tracy's new life. Possessed with extreme intelligence and courage, she manages to pull off heists that no-one else could even contemplate. Some of her schemes are ingenious while others are, frankly, quite impossible. She only has one rule: never steal from the poor. "Nobody will ever commit suicide because of me" she promises herself. She soon becomes very wealthy, but is never happy because her life seems devoid of any meaning.

Along the way, Tracy is joined by another thief, Jeff Stevens, with whom she matches wits time after time in the race to get to the target first. Even though they are rivals, the two enjoy each other's company, but Tracy vows to herself that she will never get involved with him or anyone else.

Trouble arrives for Tracy when the police finally get suspicious of her. She must elude the odd, yet brilliant, detective Daniel Cooper who has been assigned to find out about her activities. For a while it looks as if the detective will succeed, but in the end Tracy outsmarts the detective, accepts a marriage proposal from Jeff and plans on retiring from her life of crime.

Whether or not she does, we don't know, since the very last scene shows her boarding a plane and finding herself in the company of Maximilian Pierpoint, who had been an intended mark of hers for a long time....