Customer Reviews

Smoke Screen: A Novel

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I got SMOKE SCREEN in the morning from Amazon and I sat right down and read it. I could not put it down. The story is amazing and the characters are great. Sandra Brown has been one of my favorite authors for a while. I have all her books and they are mostly keepers. This one is definitely a keeper.

Britt Shelley is a news reporter for a TV station in Charleston. She made her first big break on a story about the Charleston PD and Fire Dept. An arson specialist with the Fire Dept was found in bed with a dead woman at Jay Burgess's apartment. That was five yrs ago and she and Jay had a short liasion. Jay's friend who was found in bed with the dead woman left town and has not been heard from in all that time. She is not surprised when Jay calls and invites her out for drinks. He has been one of her informants in the PD since the day she met him. She knows he is a player but now they just are friends.

She meets Jay and has a drink while he tells her he has a big story to tell her. He also tells her he has cancer and only a few weeks to live. They go to his apt for some privacy to talk, and imagine her horror to wake up in bed with Jay and he is dead.

Raley Gannon was the friend of Jay's who was found with the dead woman. He not only was disgraced and lost his job he lost his fiance. He has not forgotten the experience. When he hears about Britt's experience it sounds alot like his, because he does not remember anything about how he wound up in bed with the dead woman, when he went to a party at Jay's. He was engaged at the time and very much in love with his fiance. Britt is insisting she has no memories of going to bed with Jay.

Raley kidnaps her and interrogates her about Jay. Finally he tells her what really happened to him. Jay had convinced him to not mention anything about drugs because the dead woman had OD'd on coke. But now Raley is sure he was set up and so was Britt. They join forces when the autopsey says Jay was smothered.

From here on out this is a major ride and I loved it. There are some quaint characters and the roller coaster ride is chilling. How can they prove anything while she is wanted for murder and he is still thought of as a looser. Do not miss this one.

Reporter Britt Shelley awakens next to the corpse of a police detective with no memory of the night before. Accused of murdering Jay Burgess, a decorated police officer cited for bravery after rescuing several people from a deadly fire at the Charleston police station five years earlier, Britt takes to the airwaves and professes that she must have been slipped a date rape drug. Listening to the newscast is former arson investigator Raley Gannon, who while working on the investigation into the police station fire attended a party at Burgesses home and also work up with a corpse with no memory of events. The similarities are chilling. Britt's reporting of the events surrounding the party girl's death resulted in the destruction of Gannon's career. Now with two of the four heroes dead, and Raley and Britt joining forces, a new conspiracy might be brewing, one with a mastermind who is not above murder to cover up the past.

While this is a huge step up from the last novel by Brown, I am still on the fence from an overall standpoint and felt like she phoned this one in. I liked the suspense and the way the rest of the plot unfolded. Although well written, her once signature formula for romance was sadly missing and never really developed; these two started off disliking each other, then suddenly disrobed. I never got the feeling that there was a connection between the characters. As surprised as I was by the revelation of the culprit, I hate the plot device of a killer unveiling their master scheme as they prepare kill someone - after telling why they did what they did, unsuccessfully killing their prey and getting caught, I expected them to say "and I would have gotten away with it had it not been for you meddlesome kids" like the Scooby gang always heard when they caught their baddie.

© Tracy Vest, September 2008

I wish that I could write half as well as Sandra Brown so that my review could give this book and all her other books the write up they deserve. As usual Sandra Brown doesn't disappoint. All of her books have awesome storylines and characters that are always so real that they stay with you long after the novel ends. A truly gifted writer has the ability to completely immerse their readers in the story that the reader forgets that they are even reading at all. That is what the majority of the books written by Sandra Brown do for me. Many of my favorite author's new releases I seldom get excited about because their new books as of late just aren't up to par anymore. Not so with Sandra Brown and Smoke Screen, this author and book does not disappoint.

I've always enjoyed Sandra Brown's romantic suspense novels... she does a great job setting the scene (usually small towns in Texas or elsewhere in the South), her character development goes beyond the superficial, and she is a master at writing sexual tension/chemistry. The "suspense" portion, however, tends to be the weakest parts of her books, which is not a deal-breaker for me with the romantic suspense genre, because I read these books for the "romance" aspect more than anything. White Hot (Brown, Sandra) is one of my favorite SB along these lines.

Interestingly, I thoroughly enjoyed "Smoke Screen", despite the fact that the romantic chemistry between the lead characters wasn't as fully developed as it could have been and the leads were somewhat one-dimensional (in contrast to the secondary characters which were more fleshed out). What sold me the books (and kept me reading until all hours of the night) was the suspense, the teamwork between the two leads, and the colorful cast of characters. The plot was fast-paced and I couldn't wait to get to the end to see how the whole situation would be resolved.

I suppose that the main villain (and assorted bad guys) wasn't a big surprise; however, I think that, second to coming up with a surprise ending or twist (the movies "Psycho" and "The Usual Suspects" come to mind), the most difficult thing for a writer is to breathe new life into a formulaic plot (be it a strict romance, thriller, or any other genre) and make it compelling. Which is exactly what Sandra Brown did - and very well - in this book.

Anyways, if you're looking for a real page-turner and don't mind that there's considerably more suspense rather than romance, then give "Smoke Screen" a try.

Before I really get to the meat of this review, I'd like to state that I am a fan of Sandra Brown and despite my complaints, this was still not a bad book. The plot was good, nice twists and turns, nice surprises. So, what went wrong? Well, the characters had very little development, the ending was tacked on and abrupt, and the romance that keeps most Sandra Brown-ers coming back was pretty much lacking. But, now onto the meat of the story...
The whole plot ironically revolves around events the main characters either can't remember, or weren't there for. Five years ago Jay Burgess and a handful of friends displayed an amazing amount of heroism during the great courthouse fire in which seven died, but many were saved. At a celebration after the fact thrown by Jay, his best friend arson investigator Raley Gannon's good life hits a snag. He has one margarita only to wake the next morning next a strange woman with no memory of the night before. And surprise! She's dead. Although the death is ruled an accident, it completely derails Raley's life, costing him his career, his fiancee, and his friendship with Jay. Not to mention his reputation thanks to some slanted reporting by up and coming journalist Britt Shelley. But back to the present where Raley is living alone in the swamp and Britt is a local celebrity. But not for long. In eerily similar circumstances, Britt awakes one morning next to a sleeping Jay Burgess and no memory. And Jay's dead too. Although it's common knowledge that Jay is terminally ill, no one is buying the natural death angle and the fingers are pointed firmly at Britt. Naturally Britt and Rayley end up joining forces to clear their names and bring the biggest story of a lifetime to light: the truth behind Jay and the events of the courthouse fire five years earlier.
While the plot is wonderfully twisty and curvy, the characters are poorly developed. We never really know what changed Britt from a ambitious up and comer more that willing to slant a story, to a still ambitious but also apologetic and truthful journalist. There's also no viable reason behind the main characters sudden shift from animosity to love. And the romance is also left by the wayside. As for the ending, while a tiny bit surprising it still feels tacked on a rushed.
All in all not Sandra's best effort, but still a fun escape for her already die-hard fans.

Sandra Brown has composed an enviable body of work over the course of two decades while grabbing the well-deserved double ring of commercial and critical success. It is hard to believe that, since 1981, she has written over 50 New York Times bestsellers. Brown, through a number of elements --- a shift in location, fresh characters, ever-changing plot twists and good old-fashioned hard work --- continues to reinvent herself, with subtlety, from novel to novel, maintaining a quality level that is rarely matched and never surpassed.

Her latest, SMOKE SCREEN, is set in Charleston, South Carolina, and she gets the tone and mood of the city pitch perfect, the result of spending a number of months there as part of the preparation for writing the book. The story begins with Britt Shelley, a local television news personality, waking up in bed with a corpse. The recently departed is Jay Burgess, a Charleston police detective who acquired hero status some five years previously due to his actions with three other individuals in rescuing people from a fire at the main Police Department building. Burgess has parlayed his fame into an enviable career trajectory that has just come to an abrupt end. Shelley, however, has no memory of climbing into bed with Burgess and little memory of meeting him for drinks beforehand. When it develops that Burgess died as the result of asphyxiation, apparently due to being smothered by a pillow, suspicion is immediately cast upon Shelley, who is nowhere to be found.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Shelley was kidnapped by Raley Gannon, a man whose life has been adversely impacted by both Shelley and Burgess. Gannon, who had been a fireman at the time of the Department fire, was placed in charge of the investigation. His efforts to determine the cause of the fire, and at least one suspicious death, had been cut short when he attended a party hosted by Burgess and subsequently awoke with a notorious party girl lying dead next to him. Shelley, who had just started her career in Charleston at the time, began an investigation into the woman's death, one that cast suspicion on Gannon and ultimately ruined his life and career, and, indirectly, his friendship with Burgess. Gannon, struck by the similarities between what happened to him and Shelley's own experience, does not believe the deaths to be happenstance but rather connected incidents with the police department fire as their nexus.

Notwithstanding the hard feelings between the two --- Shelley for being kidnapped, Gannon for the irreparable damage done to his life and career --- they form a bristling, uneasy alliance as they begin to investigate the circumstances of the fire and the people who, with Burgess, were hailed as heroes. The investigation is a difficult one. The prickly relationship between the two is the least of their difficulties; Burgess, in addition to being sought by the police, has been targeted by a pair of assassins who have almost succeeded in killing her once and who will not be denied. In order to unravel what has happened to both of them, Shelley and Gannon will have to investigate a fire that has long grown cold and the individuals who were hailed as heroes on that fateful day.

Surprises abound; uncovering the secrets and deceptions of the present uncover deeds that have lain quiet for years. Shelley and Gannon slowly come to the truth of what transpired on the day of the fire, as well as what subsequently happened to them, even as they acknowledge a passionate attraction toward each other that cannot be ignored.

Brown continues to demonstrate that she is a master of writing a plausible, fast-paced mystery that keeps the surprises coming almost until the last few paragraphs. She is also capable of crafting extremely erotic scenes into her books. I may have to modify my attitude toward body piercing as a result of some of the passages here, which I carefully perused again and again. Whether you have read everything that Brown has ever written, or are new to her, SMOKE SCREEN will satisfy completely, never letting you down.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

This is Sandra Brown finest. It's more suspense than romance which is a nice change. Smokecreen is a great title because everything seems normal but beneath the surface nobody is what they seems to be. Britt is on to a potential newsstory thanks to her friend Jay until she wakes up to find him dead besides her and not able to remember what happened. Her only ally is Raley a man she basically ruined. There's loads of suspense and intrigue. The basic question is Ask Who do you trusted?

Britt Shelley is a go getter reporter. The story begins with her waking up next to a dead detective, Jay Burgess. And, she can't remember how she got there. Better yet, Jay was a decorated Charleston police officer and a hero of a police station fire that happened five years earlier.

Jay, and three others, one of whom is Raley Gannon, firefighter and Jay's lifelong friend, are praised for their bravery in getting people out of the station. Unfortunately, seven people didn't make it. Raley was investigating the fire when a scandal caused him to lose his job. When he hears about Britt, Raley realizes that her story is similar to the scandal he went through.

Raley promptly kidnaps Britt and holds her hostage until he believes her story. He releases her only to follow her and watch as she is shoved off the road and into the river. From this action, they both realize there is more to their similar stories that just coincidence. Working together, they dig into the past until the story comes to a resolution.

Victor Slezak has a great grasp on the Southern and Hill accent of the Southeastern United States. His reading adds to the story making the characters pop.

Britt Shelley is a cool confident reporter in Charleston always after a good story, and when her old flame Jay Burgess tells her he has a scoop that will launch her career, she is immediately intrigued. They meet for drinks, and Britt notices that Jay was not acting like his normal slick self. He informs her that he is terminally ill, but that is not the big story he has for her. Jay asks Britt to go to his home where they will not be overheard by anyone. As they get ready to leave the bar, Britt is not feeling well and is very unsteady on her feet. When she wakes up next to Jay in bed, she can't believe she had so much to drink that she blacked out because she has no memory of them being together. After she cleans up, Britt is horrified to discover that Jay isn't merely sleeping off a drunk, but is in fact dead. She is suspected of murder when the cause of death is disclosed. Before she has the opportunity to answer to any of the allegations against her, she is kidnapped from her home.

Rayley Gannon has been searching for answers as to how he ended up in bed with a dead girl. He was never charged with any crime, but was disgraced in the eyes of the department, and forced to resign his coveted job of arson investigator. When he heard the story about Britt, he knew she could help him search for answers. It couldn't be a coincidence that their stories were so similar. Since she reported on his case, Rayley knew she wouldn't be willing to just sit down and talk with him, so he did the only thing he could think of that will allow him to accomplish his goal. He broke into her house and took her by force. When Britt and Rayley looked at the facts in both of their stories, they were convinced that something nefarious was behind the trouble they had seen. As they teamed up together, they soon realized that someone was willing to go to any lengths to protect an old deadly secret.

This is the best book I have read by SB in a long time. Her last couple of books weren't up to the caliber I expect from this accomplished writer. This story had all the components for a great read. Rayley and Britt are both such strong and complex characters. When they pull their resources and come together to prove their innocence, they are unstoppable. I am always amazed at the intricate detailed web SB can spin. This is one you won't want to miss.

I just finished the book and man was it good. It starts out a bit slow and dull but stick with it, because once you get to the middle it really gets good. Tons of twists and surprises. You always think you know who's the criminal master mind, `the boss' behind everything, but trust me you wont know until you get to the last three chapters. So if your in the mood for a good detective thriller with a bit of romance, this ones for you.