Customer Reviews

Packing Heat (Berkley Sensation)

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

 

 

STORY BRIEF:
After Harmony's parents died, Richard became a mentor/father figure to her. He worked for the FBI and helped her become an agent. Harmony wanted to be a field agent, but the FBI kept her doing desk work. She wasn't strong with field agent skills. Richard was kidnapped by some Russians who wanted millions deposited in a bank account. The FBI refused to negotiate. Harmony took vacation time with a plan to pay the ransom and free him. She goes to a prison and gets Cole released using forged papers. He was convicted of hacking into the FBI's computer system. Cole was innocent but was framed by a bad FBI agent (Treacher) who stole Cole's software and sold it. Harmony wants Cole to hack into a system to transfer money to the kidnappers' account. They are chased by three goups: the police, men working for Treacher (who wants Cole dead), and the kidnappers (who want to know Harmony's plans).

REVIEWER'S OPINION:
This felt like one long chase scene. I wasn't drawn into the characters. There was nothing special about the dialogue. Nothing surprised or delighted me. At times I wanted it to be over. Sorry.

DATA:
Story length: 311 pages. Swearing language: moderate to strong. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 5. Total number of sex scene pages: 8. Setting: current day various locations across the U.S. Copyright: 2009. Genre: romantic suspense.

CAUTION SPOILERS:
Occasionally I've found authors using "too cutesy" names. To the best of my memory, the writing has not been good when I see this. In this story the names were Hackett (computer hacker), Treacher (treacherous bad guy), Swendahl (Svengali - a person with evil intent manipulating another), and to a lesser degree Harmony (whose nickname was Harm). I only mention Harmony because of the others. If she were the only one, I wouldn't criticize it.

On her first case, desperate FBI agent Harmony Swift enters Lewisburg United States Penitentiary to free white-collar criminal Cole Hackett' because she needs his computer skills to rescue a kidnapped agent whose ransom is information; her agency geeks will not do it. Two feds try to stop her breaking him out, bur she succeeds. She tries to persuade him to help, but he points out he is no longer the naive kid who the FBI "F" eight years ago leading to is incarceration; trust of a fed is no longer in his DNA.

Shockingly, the FBI conceals the break-out, which makes no sense to Harmony. As Cole hacks into the FBI database seeking the information, Harmony reconsiders what is happening now and what happened to Cole the first time he worked for the FBI; something is not right, but she has no idea what that is and who is behind the scenes manipulating everyone including an escapee convict and a renegade agent on the run.

This fast-paced thriller stars two wonderful people on the lam as he is rightfully a pessimist and she is an optimist; as a team they slice off the top half of the glass that contained liquid to the midpoint making it filled to the top. Fans will enjoy the wild adventures of the Fed and the anti-Fed as they fall in love while working on allegedly saving a kidnapped agent, but nothing is quite the way it seems in this action packed romantic suspense.

Harriet Klausner

I agree with Jane Stewart. Could not wait for this story to be over.
I loved tag you're it. The heroine was a little too macho for me.
Frankly I was just bored. 2 stars. p.s. if you are going to label your
book as romantic suspence, then I expect romance. (helloooooooo)