MIDNIGHT ALIAS

The second installment in Kennedy’s romantic suspense Killer Instinct series (Midnight Rescue, 2012, etc.) pairs lots of naughty words with corresponding body parts and a sloppy plot.  

Ex–Navy SEAL Luke Dubois and his teammates are pretty bored conducting surveillance on a New York mobster’s strip club, but when Luke gets up close and personal with the gangster’s stripper girlfriend, he perks right up. Olivia Taylor, a beautiful college student, started stripping at the Diamond Mine to help pay her mother’s medical bills and their living expenses, but she’s now Mafia henchman Vince Angelo’s unwilling fiancee. Luke’s team, a group of hard-bodied male mercenaries—not to be confused with their curvy female assassin counterparts—is returning a favor for a DEA official and attempting to discover the whereabouts of a DEA undercover agent who’s infiltrated Angelo’s club. Partnering with a female associate, Isabel, who’s masquerading as a stripper, the team solicits Olivia’s help; in exchange, Luke promises to help Olivia and her mother escape Angelo’s clutches. As the squad unearths leads that might yield the agent’s location, the members also learn details about a major drug deal brokered by Angelo, and Luke and Olivia uncover much more than mere information when they share some explicitly erotic moments. For readers who are willing to suspend disbelief and wade through some pretty risqué language, the book may prove gratifying regardless of the careless plot. But the questions the author neglects to answer might leave some feeling unfulfilled: Would the DEA really use private contractors to do its work? If Olivia decides to follow Luke’s advice and chuck her plans to attend law school in order to pursue a teaching career, will she pass a background check? What about that man she killed? Why did Luke not recognize Isabel, one of his good friends, when all she did to disguise herself for her stripping gig was lengthen her hair? Would the CIA freely share its satellite and thermal images with mercenaries, and how safe is it to send them via email?

It’s just too much of a stretch, darlin’.