This intense, erotic romance pairs brisk action with well-developed characters.
An undercover policewoman falls for the criminal assigned to protect her in a taut romantic thriller by author Bailey (Staking His Claim, 2014, etc.).
Seraphina Newsom, a former nurse, has wanted to be a cop since childhood. After the death of her brother, rookie cop Colin, at the hands of crime boss Trevor Hogan, she’s determined to avenge him—without official sanction from the New York Police Department. Working as a waitress (and not a very good one) at Hogan’s nightclub, Rush, she hopes to find an incriminating ledger that will put him in prison. Sera’s uncle, Police Commissioner Newsom, knows Sera has gone rogue and offers a deal, which might be construed as blackmail, to criminal Bowen Driscol to protect his niece and free her from Hogan’s clutches. From their first meeting, Sera and Bowen are immediately hot for each other, and he quickly stakes his claim, nicknaming her “Ladybug.” Sera, a practicing Catholic and a virgin, lusts for Bowen despite his reputation (she knows nothing of his arrangement with the NYPD), and she finds herself doing things that good girls don’t usually do. The pair even attends church together, a place Bowen seldom visits; but in Sera’s presence, he is called to be a better man. The two bond at Bowen’s apartment (he paints murals) and fall into a steamy, but respectful, affair. An element of distrust lingers—she knows he’s a criminal—even when Bowen proves to be reliable. After overhearing talk about a shipment of stolen goods, Sera is a marked woman, and the line believably blurs between good guys and bad. It’s a well-conceived setup, with virginal Sera a counterpoint to rough and raw Bowen, who craves her so much he’s in pain. The structure might be described as formulaic, but the dynamic between the two main characters is so well-developed as to make any formulaic elements nearly indiscernible. Although it appears a sequel is in the works, thankfully the author doesn’t leave the reader hanging but sufficiently resolves the current plotline while sparking interest in the novel to come.
This intense, erotic romance pairs brisk action with well-developed characters.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1622665648
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Select
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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