Best Man for the Job - Meredith Fletcher

I don't know Meredith Fletcher, but we have several mutual friends (Mel Odom and Bill Crider, to name two). Because of that, and because I enjoy a good romantic suspense novel now and then, I was happy to read Fletcher's new novel published in the Harlequin Romantic Suspense line, BEST MAN FOR THE JOB.


With "best man" in the title, it shouldn't come as any surprise that a wedding figures in the plot of this book. Before the wedding can take place, though, masked and heavily armed intruders bust in on the bachelor party in a fancy Las Vegas hotel suite and kidnap the groom. The groom's future brother-in-law Callan Storm is a Special Forces operative, but even though he's there, he can't prevent the kidnapping. It just so happens that also on hand is Eryn McAdams, a former exotic dancer who now works as a security consultant and private detective. Eryn was actually there to jump out of the cake in a skimpy costume, but only because she was filling in for a sick friend.


With a set-up like that, you know that Callan and Eryn are going to try to track down the kidnappers and rescue the groom, and boy, do they. This is one of those compressed action books where everything happens in about a twelve-hour span, and we're talking about a lot of action along the way. Fistfights, gunfights, chase scenes, a little computer hacking and cyber-sleuthing, all of it punctuated by an ever-increasing sexual tension between Callan and Eryn.


There's a lot more bang-bang than kiss-kiss to this one, but the late sex scene is both believable and effective. The hero and heroine are both appealing characters, and while they have some drama in their back-stories, they're not loaded down with overwhelming angst. Fletcher writes very well in a lean, fast-paced style, and this is worlds better than some of the bloated contemporary thrillers I've come across. I know she's written some other romantic suspense novels in the past, and I'll be on the lookout for them now, along with any new ones. Highly recommended.

Another E-Book Now Available

Livia's novel SPIRIT CATCHER is now available for both the Kindle and the Nook.  This is a contemporary paranormal romantic suspense novel that also has some strong Western elements (including cameo appearances by some characters who may be familiar to a few of you).  I think it's a fine yarn, of course, and you can find more background information about it on Livia's blog today.  Check it out.

Terms of Attraction -- Kylie Brant

This is one of those Silhouette Romantic Suspense novels, in this case heavy on the suspense and not so much on the romance, although it’s definitely there. The heroine is a police sniper for a SWAT team in a California city, and the book opens with her trying to stop an assassin from killing a visiting dignitary, the president of the South American nation of San Baltes (“a fictional but real-sounding country”, to quote Woody Allen from WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY). She’s recruited to join a private security company hired to protect the president and immediately gets caught in the middle of an on-going feud between the head of the company (a former Navy SEAL who’s the hero of the book) and a powerful official with the Department of Homeland Security.

The action switches to San Baltes, where we get more assassination attempts, corrupt politicians, drug cartels, kidnappings, explosions, and plenty of jungle action, to the point where this novel almost begins to resemble a Mack Bolan adventure, although it never gets quite that bloody. There’s only one real twist in the plot, and it’s not hard to see it coming, but the story is well-paced enough to pull the reader on to the end.

As usual in a romance, the hero and heroine both have dark secrets in their past that make it difficult for them to connect, but when they do, the book’s lone sex scene is well-written. Brant’s prose is terse and hardboiled in the action scenes. Overall, TERMS OF ATTRACTION is a pretty entertaining novel and worth your time if you’re a fan of romantic suspense yarns.

Cold Case Affair -- Loreth Anne White

I was looking for something completely different to read the other day and picked up this book more or less at random. I like a good romantic suspense novel now and then, so I decided to give it a chance. It had a couple of things going for it: it’s set in Alaska, a setting I usually enjoy, even though I’ve never been there and almost certainly never will be; and it’s a nice, brisk 65,000 words or so in length, maybe even a little shorter than that. A lot of the bestselling romantic suspense novels suffer from the same malady as many other bestsellers: they’re too blasted long.

COLD CASE AFFAIR starts off with a bang, literally. In a flashback set twenty years in the past, a mysterious someone plants a bomb in a mine, and when it goes off, the blast kills a dozen miners. Jump ahead twenty years, and the daughter of one of those murdered miners is returning to her hometown to take over the newspaper she inherited from her recently deceased grandfather. It’ll come as no surprise to mystery readers that she tries to find out who was responsible for that never-solved bombing, and wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that the circumstances of her grandfather’s death are pretty sinister, too. At the same time, the heroine has a lot of emotional baggage involving a handsome bush pilot to deal with. This is a romance, after all.

A lot of times, at least in my experience reading them, which is admittedly limited, romantic suspense novels skimp on the mystery and suspense. That’s not the case here, as Loreth Anne White, an author I’d never read before, blends the two elements just about evenly and does a fine job with both. Some of the mystery is pretty easy to figure out, but the plot also takes an unexpected and almost noirish turn late in the book, leading to an action-packed ending. Most importantly, White is a good storyteller and possesses that indefinable knack of making the reader keep turning the pages. I enjoyed this one quite a bit and think it’s well worth reading. I may try some of the other books in this line.