The characters were all well delineated and AJ was a great character. The pace was spot on, although I felt the ending was too long and drove the book more into the romance category than a cop procedural. Still - I look forward to reading more from this author. ( )

The characters were all well delineated and AJ was a great character. The pace was spot on, although I felt the ending was too long and drove the book more into the romance category than a cop procedural. Still - I look forward to reading more from this author. ( )

C.P. Rowlands has another winner on her hands. An excellent and realistic police procedural about drug dealers and killers. I like how the author's characters always felt like real people in real jobs rather than some hot shot spy with drop dead looks and even deadlier hooks. She is an excellent story teller and her plot is very well done. Also like the attention given to the secondary characters (not too much, but just enough insight for them to appear to me as people rather than caricatures). I also love the way the author uses the secondary characters' interactions with the leads to get more out of their backgrounds. She never needs to tell us what her characters did, felt and what they went through....we get to know them gradually througout the book. Nothing (plot, characters, baggage) felt contrived or over the top. My only gripe with the plotting has to do with the bad guys. They aren't very smart if they're trying to stay under police radar. But thats nitpicking. I loved the cover too!

That said, there is something about the author's prose that doesn't give me that emotional high that I've come to enjoy with all the books that I give a 5/5 rating to.. I like my emotional strings yanked every which way. Even with her previous work, Lake Effect Snow, Ms. Rowlands prose felt rather bland ('dry' seems too strong a word). But this is just my personal preference. ( )