The Blue Mirror

A straight-arrow lawyer pursues a local mob boss and enjoys a little romance on the side.

District attorney Shannon McKane has just won the case of her career, sending Valentine Fox, the ne’er-do-well son of a local crime kingpin, to prison for manslaughter. Now, Sebastian Fox, Valentine’s father, is out for blood. He’s determined to free his son and destroy the career of the squeaky-clean young lawyer who put him away—especially as she’s targeting him next. Shannon is almost unbelievably wholesome; her passions are art and poetry and she’s “never been close to any man”—until she meets handsome doctor Mark Jarvis during a morning stroll on the beach. Shannon falls hard for him, but could this mysterious man of her dreams be hiding something? And why is the conniving Sebastian so confident that he’ll be able to eliminate Shannon once and for all? Fans of suspenseful romance will delight in this page-turner from Anez (Ripper’s Fog, 2016, etc.), which offers both courtroom thrills and sweet, sexy love scenes. However, they’ll have to overlook some ham-fisted characterizations. Shannon’s innocence and naïveté when it comes to relationships doesn’t quite square with her tough-as-nails image as a prosecutor. Sebastian seems intended to be suavely menacing, but his flowery dialogue is more corny than scary, especially when delivering lines such as “When I’m through with her, then I believe it will be time for the final thrust, the coup de gras, [sic] so to speak.” More believable is Jeff Connolly, a police officer whose love for Shannon is unrequited and who helps steady the book’s occasional moments of melodrama. An action-packed resolution comes on a bit fast and won’t sit well with some readers, though Anez manages to make the somewhat unconventional conclusion work.

A fast-paced, if sometimes-unbelievable, romantic thriller.