HEAT SHOCK

Who killed the fighting-cock flock and why?

For all the months she’s been at St. Mary’s Hospital, ER Doc Carmen Nguyen, half-Vietnamese, half-black, all gorgeous, has been faithful to a promise she made herself: Don’t get personally involved with patients. And then suddenly, within days, she breaks the promise twice. “What on earth makes these two men so special?” she wonders. Grizzled old Luke Redstone, dying of leukemia, has an unquenchable sparkle in his eye? Sparkling eyes have meant trouble for her in the past. Ex-marine Walker Rios, whose life she saved after a terrible fall, is big and hunkish? She’s paid a painful price for her share of big and hunkish. And yet, there she is under the blazing sun, in the fierce Colorado desert winds, bouncing around on her motorbike at the behest of grizzled old Luke, searching for his prize fighting cocks—until someone begins shooting at her. What’s that all about? Soon enough, Carmen finds herself teamed up with Walker in an investigation her good sense bids her resist as her curiosity eggs her on. She learns how champion fighting cocks can be weirdly connected to a get-rich-quick medical scam, and how a good man can make a wary girl willing to take a second chance.

Carmen and Walker are an appealing pair, but Greer (Limited Time, 2000, etc.) squanders their charm with draggy pacing.