PLAY NICE

A former assassin can’t seem to hide from her past.

Anna Smith’s life is boring. She works at the Golden Gate Animal Shelter, then comes home to her dog Lenny. It’s a good thing that Lenny is such great company, because Anna has no friends or family, not even any visitors into her quiet life. No one would guess that this quiet vegetarian loner was once Anya Danielovich, assassin for hire. Raised and trained by Goren Petrovich of the KOS, Anna gave up the life with her kill of General Fedorov years earlier. She’s been living under the radar, or so she thought, until she and her co-worker Shelli are shot at during what up until then was a perfectly normal day at work. Nick Dade, who’s been tailing Anna and seen the shooter take aim, isn’t quite sure what to think. Technically, he’s been hired to kill Anna, but something stopped him from pulling the trigger first. Now he feels an obscure duty to find out who did, even though it means teaming up with Anna. Not that he feels any way about her personally; he’s just trying to do his job. Anna has her doubts about working with Nick, too, especially since she isn’t armed. But she doesn’t have much of a choice if she wants to figure out who’s uncovered her secret. The unlikely pair’s investigation leads Anna to question her past and ponder whether she can ever really leave it behind.

Halliday (Deadly Cool, 2011, etc.) combines investigation with the inevitable romance for a mystery that’s enjoyably by the book.