Customer Reviews

No One Left to Tell

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It all starts with a dead body left garishly displayed at St. Sebastian's Chapel....

Detectives Raven Mackenzie and Tony Rodriguez are assigned the murder case and the trail leads them straight to Dunhill Corporation and its owner, Fiona Dunhill. Fiona insists on a joint investigation with her head of security, Christian Delacorte, and she has the political clout to ensure it happens. Raven has to wonder what secrets Fiona and Christian are hiding, particularly as the investigation soon turns deadly in a much more personal way. Will the dark secrets of the past come out if there is NO ONE LEFT TO TELL?

Jordan Dane juxtaposes lightness and darkness throughout NO ONE LEFT TO TELL. Some of the scenes are quite graphic but the brutality is tempered by a sense of hope and rebirth. Second chances are a key theme of Jordan Dane's work and this is ever-present in NO ONE LEFT TO TELL. No matter how much a character veers towards evil or good, each character is given an opportunity for a second chance, even perhaps redemption. Jordan Dane shows true brilliance with her intricate storyline and deep rooted emotional themes that are sure to resonate with the readers.

Jordan Dane's characters always walk the knife edge in their quests to do the right thing. Christian in particular is a haunting figure, a man filled with mystery and intrigue. Raven is far more open but her attraction to Christian puts her in the dubious position of being caught between the career she loves and the man she is starting to love. The emotional rollercoaster that both these characters take the reader on can be almost overwhelming in its intensity.

NO ONE LEFT TO TELL is the sophomore effort from an author who is quickly showing she is a force to be reckoned with. Readers should note that NO ONE LEFT TO TELL is essentially a stand alone story although there are some threads left hanging for Ms. Dane's next release. NO ONE LEFT TO TELL is a dark thriller that is both captivating and intriguing.

COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES

Let me keep this simple. I own all of Jordan Dane's thrillers. I have read ALL of them at least twice. And I'm very much looking forward to the next.

Jordan has a palette of words which will tickle your intelligence and grab you with immersion in a time and place which becomes completely real.

Wonderful plots, twists, and some passionate steam fill out the picture.

Don't take my word for it. Read it yourself.

An assassin is hunted, murdered, and left hanging inside a church, a cryptic note pinned to his chest. At first, detectives Raven Mackenzie and Tony Rodriguez think it may be the work of religious radicals, until they identify the man.

But the investigation leads to dangerous territory. The man worked for one of the top crime bosses in the city, who is also female, Fiona Dunhill. Fiona, feeling the heat, takes off and disappears to parts unknown, leaving her head of security, Christian Delacorte, to deal with the aftermath.

Plagued with nightmares of a childhood trauma, Delacorte faces his fear of the dark daily with an exercise where he is blindfolded, using all of his other senses to detect everything around him. After the slaughter of his parents and sister, Fiona had taken him in and took care of him. But this time, even Christian's loyalty to Fiona is tested. Memories begin to surface in his nightmares, and Raven is sure that this who fiasco is because of his past.

The more the memories surface, the more Raven is determined to help Christian solve it, and the case. Things turn ugly when the shooting starts and her partner is put out of commission. Christian doesn't like what he remembers of his past, and with Raven getting under his skin, he is determined to deal with it - and keep Raven out of danger. But someone has other plans.

The killer is now fixated on Raven. She is the very image that he likes, and the whole thing tastes even better to him once he realizes that Raven's father had been one of the first officers to ever arrest him, the first officer to see `dead grey eyes'. But now he's out and revenge tastes all that much more sweeter when Raven is thrown into the spotlight.

The plot is thick with mazes in this story, and while I did feel a connection between Raven and Christian in this one, it could have been stronger. And while we learn the truth about Christian's past, Fiona still holds back from him, including who his biological father really is. We know who he is, but Christian doesn't, and now he's having a very hard time trusting Fiona. Lots of action and suspense, I thought it was a pretty good read. Can't wait to read the next.

Both Christian and Raven carry wounds from their childhoods--Christian suffering horrific tragedy at the hands of the police and Raven losing her father, a police officer, to an unknown random predator. Christian loathes the order to work with Raven, a police officer, to solve a murder that dredges up the terrors of his past. She fumbles in her attempt to maintain her usual guard while working in tandem with Christian, a dangerous force of nature, self-taught in unusual skills of defense . . . and predation. They both must walk a tight emotional and professional line, risking succumbing to the traumas of their past and to death itself while fighting their evolving healing connection.

I have to start this review by saying that, an avid paintbal player, I have never seen paintballs used in a more insidious fashion, lol

In Dane's second offering, she displays every hallmark of becoming one of the great authors of our time. Her characters are believable in thier strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and quirks. Friendships, romances, and adverserial relationships are portrayed in a realistic fashion that makes you like the good guys and love to hate the baddies. Protagonist cop Raven MacKenzie and her partner Tony have an especially nice relationship, a teasing friendship without a hint of sexual tension, so true of best friends of the opposite sex.

As Raven investigates a murder (where paintballs play a pivital role), she is forced to team up with Christian Delecorte, a good guy who hates the cops with good reason (or are his reasons good?). As in her first novel, Dane throws many twists and curveballs our way, presents a budding romance, and an intruiging mystery.

If her future books prove to be half this good, they're to be read on prinicple alone. Dane knows how to tell a story and keep you absorbed from beginning to end. You root for the characters you're meant to root for, hate the ones your meant to hate, and just plain aren't sure how to feel about the ones you're meant to be uncertain about.

Another wonderfully engaging offering by an author who promises to keep us entertained for years to come.

Jordan Dane combines romance and suspense in NO ONE LEFT TO TELL to the benefit of both. This book is the first part which works as a standalone but develops a new level of intrigue found here in NO ONE LIVES FOREVER. Jordan Dane is a 2008 debut author who will appeal to suspense and romantic suspense lovers as a fantastic pleasure read and also readers who want a little more in their pleasure reads than a fast-paced plot. The mystery here makes the pages fly and yet at the same time the author's imagery and finely crafted structure makes this a pleasure read beyond just a great story.

Father Antonio discovers a dead body in the chapel. Brutally slain, this body holds a message carved into the body, in its eeriness equal to the position of the body itself. The identity of the victim leads Detective Raven Mackenzie to the mysterious Fiona Dunhill, head of an organization rumored to have connections to the shady side of the law. When Fiona orders Christian Delacorte to assist the investigation, Raven suspects that Christian has his own agenda. Face to face with the mysterious and ever so sexy Christian Delacorte, a man who is both the key and the wall to her investigation, Raven must use all her detective skills and her heart to work through the maze of clues and obstacles before her. Raven's investigation will put Christian's loyalties to the ultimate test, forcing him to choose between two women: Fiona, a woman who has been like a mother to him when tragedy turned his childhood into a nightmare and Raven, a woman whose body and spirit captivates him. As Raven hunts down the murderer, the clues keep taking her back to the past, a past which haunts and riddles her conceptions, and a past which emerges from the darkness into an intricate layer of relationships. This case reaches down to the core of everything and everyone both Raven and Christian hold dear. Forced together by this investigation, Raven and Christian are attracted by a kind of hot chemistry that won't let up, a chemistry that inspires them to make choices that might lead either or both to slip in their carefully planned procedures and goals. As they hunt down the clues in a careful dance of revealing and hiding from each other to gain the advantage, Raven and Christian's hunt leads them to the dark place where their very lives requires looking into their hearts for answers.

Jordan Dane's characters grab the reader's heart in the way only the best Romantic Suspense can, with empathy from the heart and chilling open eyes as situations bring them face to face with heart-stopping danger and romance that heals inner wounds from their darkest past. From her father, Raven inherited a legacy, the law. She sees the world in terms of law and order, black and white. Intelligent, intuitive, and full of audacious spunk, Raven's encounters with Christian challenge the hot chemistry and unexplained inner trust she feels with cold hard facts. When she crosses the line of the yellow police tape, she is all professional; a woman who seeks justice for the victims with every fiber of her being, understanding that justice leaves no room for privacy in the face of violent death. But when Raven crosses the line this time, her own heart is at stake. In order to solve the case, she must reach out to the past, to her father's case histories and into elaborate human interconnections past and present. Christian is a warrior, a master at night war games, a man obsessed by darkness while clinging to its anonymity. Face to face with Raven and the murder of a former Dunhill employee, will he risk crossing the line into a more dangerous night game, the maze of his own heart and past terrors? Jordan Dane creates a wonderful match between hero and heroine where each challenges the other to reach into the deepest parts of them. Brought together by a horrific murder and the machinations of a diabolical villain, the pairing of Raven and Christian adds not only exciting romance but their love makes them whole in ways they never could have been without one another.

Jordan Dane's secondary characters add rich dimensions to NO ONE LEFT TO TELL. Father Antonio's compassion for others matches Raven's sense of respect for the victims for whom she must seek justice. Raven's partner Tony adds a new dimension to Raven's character while also showing the effects crime and police work have on an officer's family. In the midst of a case that brings everything to the line, Raven and Christian's romance and battle against crime brings romance and healing into ever increasing circles around them as love reaches out into the darkness of the human heart and beyond the hero and heroine, changing both family and friends. The structure of Jordan Dane's work reinforces this theme, creating a beautiful symmetry in beginning and end, albeit an end that has been transformed by every moment that has led to its creation.

Jordan Dane creates an intricate maze of suspense in NO ONE LEFT TO TELL that heightens the suspense reader's delight. Each clue uncovers another layer of intrigue, each one more dangerous than the next. In a finely crafted work of interconnecting relationships and events, past and present, NO ONE LEFT TO TELL steps up the level of suspense as each new detail adds a thrilling web of deceit all the way to the final shocking conclusion. Jordan Dane leaves certain mysteries and levels for further development in her next book, NO ONE LIVES FOREVER, but NO ONE LEFT TO TELL also resolves the first level of her suspense maze, leaving the reader both satisfied and also anxiously awaiting the next installment. NO ONE LEFT TO TELL is fantastic ---romance, suspense, and more. Jordan Dane puts together an eclectic group of characters, bringing an unusual spirituality to the darkest corners of crime and the human heart. NO ONE LEFT TO TELL is both a thrilling pleasure read and a work of art. The discovery of this debut author has been one of the highlights of my reading experiences this year and in the genre. Another keeper!

I bought this book because of so many five-star reviews. I realize we all have different viewpoints on books but I can't help but think friends and family of Ms.Dane contributed to its high marks. Don't waste your money.

In my opinion--and I have won writing awards, myself, so it must count for something :)--Jordan Dane is one of the most skillful writers around. Not only are her plots varied & out of the ordinary, but the writing & descriptive phrases are outstanding.

The two main characters in "No One Left to Tell" are also featured in her next book, "No One Lives Forever", and I highly recommend reading both (but in order). I'm really happy to have discovered Ms Dane... even though it does mean forking out more money for books :)

Christian started out to be a bit mysterious but unfortunately, that aspect of him disappeared. Raven was all right, but I found it appalling that she - as a professional cop - acted so unprofessionally when frisking Christian. That just wasn't cool. If the situation was reversed and the guy was the cop, most women would be furious if he took such liberties in the line of duty, and with a woman he barely knew.
The story had it's moments, although it was predictable, but there were many dead spots in it.

A man has been murdered and Detective Raven Mackenzie and her partner Tony Rodriguez are sent to the scene of the crime. Their investigation leads them to Fiona Dunhill. Fiona insists that her chief of security Christian Delacorte work with them. Christian is a mystery himself. As Raven tries to solve the crime, it becomes clear that Christian's mysterious past ties in somehow. Fiona has a secret that is threatening all of those surrounding the case. She disappears and Christian is left to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. What he discovers is more baffling than the murder though. Now Raven is in danger and Christian is determined to keep her safe.

No One Left To Tell is another gripping novel from Jordan Dane. No One Left To Tell gives fantastic perspective into the villains' minds while the suspenseful storyline and intense leading man held me riveted to each page. Raven is tough and yet feminine and Christian is mysterious, vulnerable and very sexy. I am a big fan of Jordan Dane's descriptive writing style and intriguing stories. I'm looking forward to her next novel!

Nannette
reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed