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INTO THE STORM
by Suzanne Brockmann
Ballantine Books, August 2006
384 pages
$21.95
ISBN: 0345480147


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Navy SEALS and a private security company, Troubleshooters Incorporated, are challenged to go against each other in a hostage-taking game. Both sides are filled with well-trained professionals; all are the best at what they do.

In this mock battle, Mark Jenkins and Lindsey Fontaine are both deeply concerned with trying not to become involved with each other. At 28 Mark has just got his high school crus, Tracy Shapiro a job at Troubleshooters Incorporated, hoping she will finally notice him and return his boyish admiration. Lindsey knows of his hankering for the bubble-headed Tracy and is disgusted with him, all the while hoping he'll see that Tracy isn't worthy of him and that she is.

Meanwhile, a crazed killer and kidnapper has been grabbing lone women, taking them to his hideaway, torturing and killing them. When Tracy tries to find her way home from a training game, the mad killer takes her. The group is soon off to the rescue.

Billed as an exciting and action-filled story, INTO THE STORM doesn't provide much of either. Although it is supposed to be about trained soldiers and professional action takers, it is more like a high school game of dress up. Somehow the women who come from the usual police backgrounds are as well trained and at the peak of their physical prowess as the Navy SEALS. This is obviously a rather silly way of including women as equals to the soldiers. That's the reader's first clue that this book has very little to do with reality and a lot to do with a romance story poorly camouflaged as an action thriller. Another good clue is that every single woman in this book is absolutely gorgeous and every man a vision of physical male perfection.

The so-called battle-weary professionals spend most of their time flirting, making hook-ups and ragging on each other like teenagers. Every page is more like a soap opera where adults are angst-ridden about whether the person of their dreams likes them or not. The professions of these people could just as easily have been brain surgeons, astronauts or street cleaners, their mindsets are on love matters, and not one of them seems to be a professional of any sort.

The chapters with the killer are bloodthirsty and gruesome with no style or creativity. I couldn’t help but think the writer decided to be as nasty as possible in these sections so as to make her book less of a romance. It all falls flat.

It's not a thriller or mystery; only read INTO THE STORM if you like improbable romance stories.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, August 2006

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