#TBRChallenge 2025: Tangle of Lies

The Book: Tangle of Lies by Patricia Potter

The Particulars: Contemporary romantic suspense, Berkley, 2005, Out of print, eBook edition by Open Road Media 2015

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I had an autographed print copy in my TBR which means I picked this up at an RWA conference, probably in (yikes) 2006 since I don't recall attending in 2005 but it's been 20 years and who even knows anymore.

The Review: Life is pretty darn sweet for Liz Connor. She's just purchased the business (an outdoor adventure company) that had been employing her for several years, she's newly elected to the Santa Fe city council, and she's repairing her strained relationship with her overprotective mother. Then her father calls. Her mother is missing. When he came home he found her, along with their outdated home computers gone.  

Betty Connor isn't missing. She's been arrested by the FBI. They claim she's really Sarah Jane Maynard, a former Vietnam War protestor who, along with her compatriots, held up an armored car and killed the two guards. Frankly it's all so unbelievable. Her mother? The stay-at-home wife who baked cookies for local school bake sales? But it doesn't take long for their traditional nuclear family to implode. Betty / Sarah Jane refuses to see her husband or her two daughters, nor take any part in mounting a legal defense. Then all hell breaks loose. Someone sets fire to Liz's home and steals her computer hard drive. Her niece is nearly abducted when a strange man claiming to be her uncle shows up at her day camp. Then two men walk out of the woodwork claiming they want to help her.  Michael Gallagher, a slick corporate lawyer from Boston who works for Betty's family (never mind nobody knew she had family....) and Caleb Adams, a haunted former Boston cop turned PI who, conveniently enough, lives not far from Santa Fe. 

I realize I just set this up to sound like a love triangle, but it's not.  Caleb is most definitely our hero, and sure enough, he's keeping a Big Secret from the heroine. "For reasons," he's been obsessed with the armored truck heist for years, working the cold case when he was with the Boston PD. Then his wife and son are killed in an explosion and that grief feeds and grows his obsession to bring the fugitives to justice. The reader is clued in right away on what Caleb's backstory is, which means the rest of the story has a Sword of Damocles feel to it waiting for the other shoe to drop and the heroine to find out. And when she does? Well she was focused in finding out the truth before, but after the bombshell drops she turns into a one-woman wrecking crew. I liked her before, I kind of fell in love with her during those final chapters.

Original Cover

The pacing in this story is relentless. Potter doesn't waste any time mashing her foot on the accelerator and we're off the races from the start of the first page. The romance takes more time. Caleb and Liz aren't really on page together for any meaningful stretch until around 25% and the romance itself is pretty light in the pants. It's hard to believe a couple is catching feelings with such a huge Big Secret standing between them, and there's a sizable enough cast of characters involved in the suspense thread that it doesn't leave a lot of time for the lovey-dovey stuff.  Naturally the attraction and lust comes through loud and clear, and there are sex scenes, but it's not what really kept me invested in the story. I'm a sucker for cold case storylines and if you mix in Ghosts of Vietnam Era Radicals Past, I will eat it up. 

Romantic suspense is tricky and there are definitely two camps of readers - those who want more forward facing romance and those who want a compelling suspense thread to take center stage.  This book definitely falls into the latter category, although I still wanted more detail about the crime itself. This is more of a "reactive" story - Liz and Caleb running around trying to uncover the truth and why anyone would now be threatening the Connor family. Is it just a matter of the money from the heist having never been recovered or is there something more sinister lurking under that rock?

The ending got a little cheesy for me and frankly I'm not so sure about the epilogue, but it was a fast-paced, entertaining read that kept me flipping the pages. Lord knows I've unearthed some duds out of my print TBR but this story definitely held my interest.  Also it's amazing how dated 2005 sounds now - smart phones weren't a thing yet and everyone's cell phone was a flip phone 😂.  Excuse me while my bones turn to dust.

Final Grade = B-