Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great start to a new series, October 1, 2008
I loved Show No Mercy. Gerard just gets better with each book she writes. The characters in SNM had such great depth and Gerard really gave them excellent back stories to reveal their personalities and reasons for why they are who they are. Gabe was your great alpha, don't-want-to-love-again hero. But, he was so much more than just your typical alpha hero and wasn't just a cliche. Jenna was a tough, yet vulnerable, very likeable heroine and the two had great chemistry together.
What I especially liked was the balance of romance to suspense. It seems more and more romantic suspense books are leaning more to the suspense story and the romance is more of an afterthought or just a sub-plot. Some seem to think if there is the prerequisite sex scene or two that constitutes a romance. Not so, in my mind. Gerard knows how to write great romance and her suspense stories are taut and nail-biting. I can't wait to read the next in the series. The excerpt at the end of SNM was really a teaser - it didn't even reveal who the hero is in the story! But, it will surely be great whoever gets to be featured, as she laid out the groundwork for the next books well and she presented the characters well so that the reader will want to read more about them.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Good Read!, October 12, 2008
This book features two characters dealing with various emotional scars, who are forced to team up to combat not only external forces, but also their own inner demons.
Jenna is a hotshot, globe-trotting reporter who is struggling to come to terms with an event that left her questioning, on very fundamental levels, who is she and if she'll ever be able to reclaim her sense of self.
Gabriel is a man scarred both physically and emotionally. A true alpha male in every sense of the term, he is take charge and intensely focused and skilled in matters of combat. He is also dealing with a profound loss, and extreme guilt and anger that have left him closed off emotionally.
While less capable authors would take the aforementioned factors and use them to create a novel that is little more than unrelieved melancholy and characters who are (voluntarily or otherwise) self-centered, Gerard allows her characters to be very real, in terms of being simultaneously flawed and honorable, grief-stricken and truly funny and snarky.
As Jenna and Gabe grow closer (whether they like it or not), their romance does not in any way take away from the action and danger, and the almost palpable suspense, and the reverse holds true, as well. What the reader is left with, then, is a novel that is equal parts action and romance, which is a rarity this day and age, as all too often authors allow one aspect or the other to languish undeveloped or virtually ignored while the other receives most of the attention.
Fortunately, Cindy Gerard has proven that she is adept at handling everything from explosions and gunfights, to passionate love scenes and intensely emotional conversations. This is a very well-written book that is a truly great kickoff to what promises to be a fantastic new series.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Debut of Black Ops, Inc. - A Great New Romantic Adventure Series, October 3, 2008
MERCY ME! - Make way on your keeper shelves for the next great romantic adventure series, Black Ops, Inc. by Cindy Gerard coming October 2008 for Pocket Star Books starting with Book #1, SHOW NO MERCY which is sheer reading pleasure from first page to last! In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Gabriel Jones and a team from Black Ops, Inc. have been hired to protect unpopular American business mogul Emilio Maxim, on his visit to the National Congress building. However, they're really watching Maxim for his connection to Rashman Hudin, who is a primary suspect in an international plot to wreak havoc between Western democracies and Jihadists and tied into their former MC6 op of destroying a Nazi mind control compound in Argentina. BOI is a special team of former Special Ops military men, who are now all mercenaries working privately with a lot less regulations than when they were on Uncle Sam's payroll. Gabriel is waiting on the street for Maxim disguised as a drunken peasant in a dirty poncho and scuffed boots which conceals his weapon of choice, a lethal Butterfly blade that he never leaves home without. However, instead of Maxim, Gabe is shocked to see the beautiful, redheaded, mouthy American journalist, Jenna McMillan he thought he said good-bye to for good after the MC6 mission 9 months ago. Jenna is again on assignment in Argentina for Newsday to interview, Maxim and to prove to herself she has the guts to go back into a dangerous situation for a story and because there's a certain mercenary she can't seem to forget. When Maxim finally arrives the mission is a total disaster! There's not only a car that arrives with a masked gunman firing an AK-47 but another car that drives right up onto the sidewalk obviously triggered with a bomb! Gabe makes a flying leap to tackle Jenna and saves her life but when he wakes up with a wounded leg, she is far from grateful. Gabe and Jenna's adversarial relationship takes right back up where they left off but it soon becomes apparent that their feelings for each other and who exactly needs protection isn't always clear.
SHOW NO MERCY shows that Cindy Gerard knows how to craft phenomenal romantic suspense! She shows this through her absolutely fantastic hotter-than-life characters. She shows this through their fabulous verbal repartee. She shows this through her thrillingly dangerous plots. She shows this through her heart-in-your-throat passionate love stories. And finally Ms. Gerard shows us why she's a New York Times bestselling author!
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