Dead Heat

I knew I was going to like this one. It's interesting, though--it's not easy to like a protagonist who's depressed, and Daphne is depressed, cutting herself off from emotions and life after 9/11--she's a former FBI agent & feels guilty for not preventing it. Overlapping, interwoven plot threads have Daphne following a woman whose boyfriend suspects her of infidelity to a business called Rules of Engagement, a counseling service that claims to show women how to get the men in their lives to propose. She meets the son of the owner and breaks all the rules, and a simple, boring assignment turns into an investigation of murder, possible terrorism, and leads her to a man who can understand and help her heal. The story is dense, emotional, and exciting--all things I've come to expect from this author.

Of the three former FBI Agents who formed Partners in Crime, Daphne Donovan is the most reluctant as she holds herself culpable for what happened in New York on 9/11. Still urged by her partners Rainey Roby (see DANGEROUS CURVES) and Aimee Devlin (see I SPY) and her "brother" Brooks Madison she reluctantly takes on investigation jobs. Her current assignment is to investigate Nicole Solem, the fiancée of Naples, Florida banker Keith Melman who was burned once by a cheating spouse. However, Daphne is not the only one observing Nicole. Former chemist Jenna Marisol blames Nicole's father for the deaths of her spouse, two children, and her mother though she dispatched the latter. When Nathan was CEO of Geon, he persuaded his employers including Jenna's husband to invest while he divested himself of his holdings; when the stock collapsed, Jenna's world went with it. Now she plans to use her new cigarette smoking pal Nicole as the means to enact revenge. Only Daphne and her partner Sam Bryson stand in the way of Jenna's success that will leave many CEOs and Nicole dead. Readers will commiserate with the heroine's struggle to move on with her life as she blames herself for 9/11 and wonder if she will be able to stop a mass murder from occurring even with Sam encouraging her through his love for her . At the same time, Jenna has found death as the only means to move on with her life. Thus fans receive a deep psychological suspense thriller starring two women, hosting demons from their respective pasts, seeking personal "redemption"; one as a killer, the other as a protector. Jacey Ford is at her best with this action-packed thriller that countdowns to a final confrontation. Harriet Klausner