About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

SCORCHED
by Rachel Butler
Bantam, August 2007
325 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0440243378


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

SCORCHED is an appropriate title for this fast-paced, sexy third novel by Rachel Butler. With the simplest of subtle nuances, passion and suspense sizzle off the pages. A gorgeous assassin protagonist, a sexy homicide detective, and danger at every turn - what more could you want?

Selena McCaffrey is the beautiful biracial love child of a rich Southern family who was raised on the streets of Jamaica and learned early that she had only one option: survive. Trained as a highly skilled assassin, Selena has made her fair share of enemies, and now one of them has put out a half-million-dollar contract on her life. After a bomb destroys Selena's house, she and her boyfriend, Tulsa homicide detective Tony Ceola, go into hiding, racing from Tulsa to Atlanta to Alabama. There they discover a scorching secret about Selena's past, about her mother's death, and about how close her worst enemy really is.

As Selena tries to reconstruct the mystery that is her past, Butler introduces a good number of unsavory characters. Two of the world's most elite assassins have taken the job of ending Selena's life, and one more deadly than the rest has made it her mission to keep Selena alive. The trick here is that we never know whether the lovely Charlize - known in the profession only as 'JT' - is a true ally or simply saving the job for herself.

Selena's character is sympathetic in that she's a reluctant assassin -- she only kills when it's absolutely necessary, when her life or the life of someone she loves is in jeopardy. And unlike the cool Charlize, Selena feels great remorse for having killed, no matter how often both Tony and Charlize tell her it's part of the job.

Butler spins tension like a tight cloth into each passage, with romance and danger equally intense in a compelling tale of secrets and deception, where family plays a huge role in each aspect and it's not clear who can be trusted until the shocking end.

Reviewed by J.B. Thompson, July 2008

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]