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 When he came home he found her, along with their outdated home computers gone.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.
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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-
8 comments:
Another B book, this is a good run!
(I'm convinced I have read and reviewed at least one book by this author, but I can find no proof of it; I do have at least a couple of her books in print somewhere, though, and I should give her a try)
Sounds like a winner to me! I also tend to lean more towards the suspense element of romantic suspense (there's nothing worse than feeling like that darned old crime so inconveniently interrupted sexytimes!) and it is a tough needle to thread.
The struggle was real with me for this month's prompt, so my choice is probably tenuous at best, LOL. Every time I saw it I thought of the song, and with my vintage eye I decided to see if I had anything on Mount TBR from the same year the song was released. I had more than one book! And I chose Victoria Holt because, well, how can you not in that situation? LOL. I picked "Lord of the Far Island" and gobbled it up. Really liked that the heroine wasn't a moron and that she was going to solve all of the mysteries surrounding her in her gothic castle before she decided to marry the "hero". I was not as fond of him - he was extremely pushy and creepy IMO - but the way all the relationships shake out ultimately makes sense. It was a fun escape to the wilds of the Cornish coast and definitely what I needed in the midst of my nonfiction glom.
Funny, same here! I do own several historical romance ebooks by her from when Open Road was giving away a ton of books.
It sounds like there was a lot of "Hustle" in this one! I struggle with romantic suspense because I hate when MCs are thinking about how cute a butt is when they are in dire straights!
AL: This isn't the kind of book I'd tell someone to drop everything and buy a copy right now, but if it's in your TBR I thought it was pretty solid. It kept me engaged, and honestly that's half the battle these days.
Adding Willaful here: Potter has written a ton, with a lot of variety. Scottish historicals, western historicals, romantic suspense and she's got some category romance in her past (SuperRomance and I think Intimate Moments maybe?). Anyway, chances are she's written something that might be of interest for most romance readers. Shockingly I have yet to try her westerns, but back in my TRR I reviewed one of the Scottish historicals, The Black Knave, and liked it. A B read at the time, but grain of salt here because I read it a looooong time ago.
Eurohackie: That's a great way to interpret this months' theme! That's actually a Holt I've never read before and I love your description of the heroine. The "hero," unfortunately, sounds like a lot of his brethren from that era of Gothic fiction, but whatcha gonna do? I'm going to look that one up!
Jen: So much hustling! I thought I was going to need to dig around in my TBR for while but this was the first book I took off the shelf and the blurb sucked me in. I cannot stress enough how much I love cold case plots in suspense. And yeah, honestly I was OK with the romance being a little weak in this story, because I struggle with that aspect of romantic suspense as well.
Ha, I'm glad my interpretation of the theme isn't as tenuous as I thought!
I really liked this heroine. So many gothic heroines are tripping over themselves with their stupidity, but not this one. Definitely recommend!
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