SECOND SHOT
by Zoe Sharp
Tough cookie Charlie Fox is back, acting as bodyguard to a woman whose sudden wealth has put her at risk on both sides of the Atlantic.
Most people would be glad to win £13 million. But her windfall just makes Simone Kerse more vulnerable to Matt, the lover (and father to her daughter Ella, four) she dumped after five years. Simone doesn’t think she needs protection—after all, is Matt, who’s repeatedly left her notes and bouquets and begged to see his daughter, a stalker? Rupert Harrington, her banker, disagrees, and soon Charlie is signed on as bodyguard. After her blood-soaked debut (First Drop, 2005), this assignment should be a walk in the park for a girl trained to kill by Her Majesty’s armed forces. But Charlie soon realizes that Matt is the least of Simone’s problems. Her determination to track down her long-vanished father, last spotted in Boston, leaves her wide open to kidnappers, imposters and killers. Six will die before the epilogue. Yet the tale has less action, less suspense, less amour and less mystery (despite one especially neat twist) than Charlie’s first—and there’s more posturing, more shouted or whispered threats about who’s going to do what to whom at the first opportunity and more iterations of that old chestnut, “If I wanted you dead…you’d be dead already.”
Sturdy distaff pulp, though Charlie won’t abate your dreams of James Bond, or even Modesty Blaise.