LynneC’s review of HOT Pursuit (Hostile Operations Teams, Book 1) by Lynn Raye Harris
Contemporary Romance published by Lynn Raye Harris 14 Jul 13
Evie Baker is washing hair at her mama’s salon while she gets her life back. She’s a chef and her ex-partner, David, used her small Florida bistro to launder money for a drug lord. Then he robbed her blind and disappeared. Evie was lucky to escape without serious debt.
Evie’s situation is believable and I don’t think her behaviour made her stupid. Far from it. She’s unlucky, that’s all. It would have been nice to see some evidence of her passion for cooking in the novel. In my experience, chefs are driven people. They don’t stop doing it because they don’t have a business to run or they’re not working as one. But that’s a small point. It’s really just a background for the story.
Matt Girard is captain of a small unit of military men who are like Rangers plus one. They do the dark stuff. This is where I find my credulity stretched somewhat, but then, I’m a big Homeland fan, so I’m not really one to speak. However, Matt’s “my country right or wrong” attitude isn’t one often found in the black ops forces, or at least has a more realistic basis. And sometimes his actions in the story don’t seem consistent with a highly trained military operative. He does make a couple of tyro mistakes.
When a redneck shoots at Evie at a party, Matt disarms him. Because he still wants Evie despite hurting her years ago, before he lit out for the army, he fights his desire for her and hers for him. He took Evie’s virginity, at her request, when she was eighteen, and then shot his mouth off at school, which made her a target, and he wasn’t there to stand up for her. But he feels very, very sorry for that and he more than makes up for his stupid youthful error during the course of the story.
Matt goes into protector mode, even though he’s supposed to be home on leave after an operation went wrong, recovering from a relatively mild injury and waiting for his review. He’s fairly sure his army career is finished, but he loves his life and doesn’t want to give it up.
In many ways this book resembles the first Suzanne Brockmann Troubleshooter book, where the head of a unit is home on leave, waiting to hear about an operation that went wrong and hooks up with an old flame. But Brockmann’s heroes have a more complex psychology which is absent here. Tom Paoletti doesn’t believe in black and white, and he doesn’t believe that whatever he’s ordered to do is right. Every member of his unit has a different motivation for doing what he or she does and they aren’t simple. Matt has a straightforward outlook, one that would take him far in the world of the regular army, even the Rangers, but not in black ops, where men are required to do dirty jobs sometimes that don’t fit well with the ideals of the country they are working for.
I tried not to compare this story with the Troubleshooters book, but sometimes it was difficult. Of course, there are many other stories with the same premise, so much that it’s become a trope, but I know that this story won’t stay with me as long as the Brockmann has. Or the whole Troubleshooter series.
I do enjoy the depiction of the bayou, almost a character in the story, and the small-town life. That is well described and kept me going. However, the name of the unit that Matt works for made me snigger. Sorry, but I don’t think HOT, whatever it stands for, is an acceptable acronym. These units are called something that doesn’t stand out at all, like “unit 6.” So people don’t look. You see an army unit called HOT, you are going to look.
And while Harris uses all the words, the book doesn’t have enough sex scenes or enough real heat to qualify as erotic. Using “fuck” isn’t enough. It doesn’t make sex scenes erotic and it doesn’t make a hero a badass or a heroine modern. In fact, while I appreciate army guys using the words as natural as breathing (I married into an army family, and wow, yes), they seem tacked on in this story. It doesn’t seem to work with the characters. The words are used as if they aren’t intrinsic to the characters or story, but just used because they are required.
But the story is exciting enough and it kept me reading. When it’s obvious that Evie has a McGuffin (to use Hitchcock’s term) and she doesn’t know what it is, the baddies come looking and do something nasty to get her to divvy up. Matt and Evie have to act fast if they’re going to survive.
The story falls a bit flat when it follows the baddies and when it goes into the mind of Evie’s sister, because I don’t care about them. They don’t really have any redeeming features or any reason for me to care if they live or die. Sorry, but I want to know more about Matt and Evie, and I don’t get it. I could have done with less of the other stuff.
And the rest of the team? I might pick the books up, but I’m not holding my breath. They’re definitely okay with characters you can spend a book with, but they won’t stay with me, and they’ll merge into bunches of other characters with similar stories that I’ve read over the years. It is a fun read, professionally written, but not different enough or distinctive enough to be memorable.
Grade: C
Summary:
Evie Baker’s luck just ran out. Thanks to an ex-partner with organized crime ties, she’s lost her restaurant, her money, and nearly all her self-respect. Forced to return to her hometown and work as a shampoo girl in her mother’s salon, she doesn’t think her luck can get any worse.
But then someone starts shooting at her, her sullen baby sister is suddenly missing, and the high school heartthrob who stole her heart–and her virginity–is the only man big enough and bad enough to help.
Might be the only one who can save her…
Captain Matt “Richie Rich” Girard can’t afford to get involved. He’s already on the verge of a court-martial after a Top Secret op gone wrong, and he’s been ordered to stay out of trouble while he’s home for his sister’s wedding.
But when Evie’s ex-partner turns up dead, staying out of trouble is the last thing on Matt’s mind. He failed Evie once before; he can’t fail her again. If he’s going to protect her from a killer, and find her sister before time runs out, he’ll have to risk his entire future–and both their lives–to do it.
Read an excerpt.
