~~ Breaking Point
by Suzanne Brockmann
(Troubleshooters #9)
On a conference in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Natalie Benoit, a Denver Independent investigative reporter, is kidnapped from her tour buss, while her Mexican colleagues are shot. She’s transported, bound in the trunk of a car, to an abandoned village, where members of the drug cartel Los Zetas promise her all kinds of torture at the hands of their leader.
But Natalie is not alone. Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal, Zach McBride, has been the unfortunate guest of Hotel Zetas for five days, enduring starvation and torture because a fellow operative has betrayed him to the cartel, claiming he’s stolen their shipment of cocaine. He hasn’t said anything, his mind hasn’t broken, but he knows his body soon will. And he welcomes that knowledge, until Natalie is imprisoned in the cell next to him.
Determined to save her from rape and certain death, and determined to keep his promise to him to get her across the border, Zach, with Natalie’s help, escapes, and the two take on the arduous journey of trekking across the US-Mexican border into Arizona...But it soon becomes apparent, Natalie’s kidnapping wasn’t random, and even back in the US she’s far from safe.
Gee-zus!
After the romance-heavy Naked Edge, this book brought us back into the broader romantic suspense element, where suspense, tension, danger and action reined supreme, and still the romance, although not as potent as in the predecessor, still packed quite a punch.
The story begins with a scary, blood-filled kidnapping scene, and quickly follows with an adrenaline-filled escape from a drug cartel and a dangerous trek across the desert. If that doesn’t get your heart-rate up, I don’t know what will.
It was gripping, intense, fast-paced, and had my eyes glued to the page, wishing and hoping for them to make it safely across.
Then it was suddenly over, and we were barely halfway into the story. It couldn’t be over, they couldn’t have been that simple. Could it?
And then the truth came out, and it all (but the motive) made sense. It wasn’t over, it was just the beginning, and the danger was still more than real.
And when it all came to an end, that final showdown in the storm and driving rain, the way the bad guys gained access, the torture, the helicopter rescue that might’ve come too late...It was so vivid, so intense, so well-written, I thought I was there, with them, watching and hoping.
I loved it. I loved every single word of this suspenseful novel. Bravo, Ms Clare.
The romance wasn’t half-bad either. Which is an understatement. The romance was as solid as every single one in this series. Dramatic, intense, bittersweet, angst-filled, and utterly hot (even when they were already out of the desert ^_~).
Zach was as much a tortured hero as his predecessors, with an extra heaping of issues brought on by his PTSD and his survivor’s guilt. Determined, capable, and protective even barely standing, he didn’t know what hit him when Natalie came along, and was completely incapable of preventing the inevitable no matter how he tried.
And Natalie, the sweet little Southern Magnolia with a spine of pure steel. I loved the chick to bits. She knew she needed Zach to survive, and she did everything in her power to help him get her through the desert. She suspected the worst of him, yet she trusted him implicitly, because he gave her reason to. She listened to him, did what he told her without objection...It took guts to trust her life into the hands of a stranger, but she did it, and neither she nor I were disappointed.
Their slow descent into romance was beautiful to read, although slightly painful thanks to Zach’s issues and resistance. But in the end, they healed each other, stuck with each other, and that’s what counts.
This book is worth reading for the suspense and action alone, but the great romance helps nevertheless. Awesome!
Gina Vitagliano is dead and Max Bhagat is full of regrets...But as he flies to Germany to recover the body of the only woman he's ever truly loved and bring her home, it's not Gina underneath the sheet in the morgue. The real Gina's been kidnapped, alongside one of her friends, to lure Grady Morant a.k.a. Jones to Indonesia.
Retribution for her death forgotten, the job that was his life forgotten, regrets forgotten, Max only has one goal—get to Gina and hope he's not too late.
What a disappointment this conclusion in the Gina/Max love story was. I was hoping for more. I was expecting more, and instead got a flashback filled first half of the book (flashbacks that detailed almost the minutiae of Max and Gina's failed relationship a year and a half ago, which was pointless, because we all knew that the asshole that Max turned into had pushed her away—no news there). And once the flashbacks were over, and Max and Gina were finally reunited, what does the girl (not woman, because if she was a woman she'd make him grovel, I know I would) do? She readily forgives him because he thought she was dead and he had tears in his eyes when he told her.
Sheesh! Talk about a doormat. The man treated her like crap, used her for sex, shut her out of his life and his emotions (although she did give up too easily, if you ask me), and she just forgives him because she loves him.
Yes, forgiveness was a given in this case (I wanted her to forgive him), but she gave in too easily in my opinion, swayed by his charm, his telling her what he truly felt for her, and those pesky tears.
The space given to the flashbacks could've been spent telling the story in the present, to solve the conflict more satisfyingly (with Max groveling), and make the suspense a little more gripping. As it was, the whole kidnapping plot was solved too easily, and the stand-off looked to be a piece of cake as well.
I didn't really care about the secondary romance, except for the fact it served to bring Max and Gina together and solve their (pointless) conflict...And Jules, as always, saved the day.
Joe Pickett always liked Butch Roberson—a hardworking local business-owner whose daughter is friends with his own. Little does he know that when Butch says he is heading into the mountains to scout elk, he is actually going on the run.
Two EPA employees have been murdered, and all signs point to Butch as the killer. Soon, Joe hears of the land Butch and his wife had bought to retire on—until they are told the EPA declared it a wetland—and the penalties they charged Butch until the family was torn apart by debt. Finally, it seems, the man just cracked.
It’s an awful story. But is it the whole story? The more Joe investigates, the more he begins to wonder—and the more he finds himself in the middle of a war in which he must choose sides.
Possibly one of the best of Joe Pickett
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