A financial sleuth sets her sights on a suspect who seems very guilty and very attractive in this twisty romantic mystery.
Dawn McCafferty wants a more exciting man and a less exciting job, so she dumps her clingy nebbish of a boyfriend and quits the FBI to take what she hopes will be a sedate gig as an investigator with a federal agency called the National Credit Union Association. When a San Diego credit union’s computer system misplaces $320 million, NCUA geeks start poring over millions of lines of code, but McCafferty’s intuition zeroes in on the likely thief: Tom Williams, a disgruntled employee who was accused of embezzlement 18 months before and sidetracked into a dead-end post as a debt collector. Tom insists he’s innocent, but he has a motive—revenge—and he’s a thorough-going rogue to boot: when Dawn accuses him, he replies by asking her out for dinner. Dating the prime suspect is frowned upon, but what the hell, Dawn figures; she likes overpowering men with her looks—she’s got martial arts chops and a nine millimeter for backup—and thinks she might worm a confession out of Tom after a few drinks. What follows is a tango of seduction and deception as Tom and Dawn fence, flirt and get under each other’s skin while her fuming superiors keep the couple under surveillance. Dawn’s certainty that he’s the perp never wavers, yet Tom eludes every snare set by the humiliated feds; the more she pursues him the more she is drawn to his resourcefulness, bad-boy charm and restless soul. O’Bryant shapes Dawn’s dilemma—what if she has to send her ideal man to prison?—into a zesty yarn, complete with snappy dialogue, colorful characters and an intricate plot whose many turns will keep readers guessing. Tom and Dawn are two strong, prickly but warm-hearted leads, and we can’t help hoping they’ll wind up hand-cuffed to each other. A nifty whodunit-cum-love story with a touch of screwball comedy.
Pub Date: March 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4500-4270-3
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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