THE KILLING STORM

A Texas Ranger juggles two difficult cases as a hurricane bears down on Houston.

While Sarah Armstrong and her partner Buckshot investigate the shooting of an extremely valuable Longhorn bull who has a strange symbol inked on his hide, Sarah’s love interest, FBI agent David Garrity, searches for a little boy who disappeared from a park while his inattentive mother was talking on her cell phone. The mother, Crystal Warner, is just involved enough to join her parents in accusing the police of hounding her when they should be searching for her Joey. Though Sarah wants to help in the search, she’s deterred by several more bulls found dead with new symbols on their sides. A visiting professor, Dr. Benoit, tells her that they’re African symbols brought by slaves from their homelands and translates them for her. Crystal splits her time between helping David search for the missing child, trying to figure out who’s killing the bulls and helping her mother get their ranch ready to withstand the threatened hurricane. When her partner is murdered, Sarah realizes that Benoit, who is not who he claims to be, may be involved in both cases. So begins a dangerous race against time to find the missing boy before the hurricane strikes.

Pulse-pounding action alternates with stilted dialogue in Sarah’s third (Blood Lines, 2009, etc.).