Published by Pegasus Crime, December 7, 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-605-98508-2 (Paperback)
This tenth and newest entry in the series brings back Charlotte ("Charlie") Fox and her lover, Sean Meyer, a junior part ner in Armstrong-Meyer, an elite "close-protection organization.. This time around they are tasked with the safety of one of the men behind a celebrity fundraising event for the still nascent recovery of the city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina several years ago. But the soiree doesn’t go exactly as planned.
Charlie and Sean are still dealing with events in their past, Charlie’s much further back that Sean’s: She left the service after a court-martial and then an “equally disastrous” civil trial following her gang rape many years ago. Sean’s trauma was much more recent: He had been in a coma for months after a near-fatal shooting while on their last job, leaving him with only scattered memory of the last four years, and now dealing with “the long road back to some kind of physical and mental fitness,” the question being whether or not he could still handle the job.
In addition to the man Charlie and Sean have been hired to protect, nearly all of the other well-healed attendees at the event have brought their own bodyguards with them, one of these, unfortunately for our protagonists, being Vic Morton, with whom Charlie has a history, and not a good one (gross understatement): He was one of the men who had raped Charlie years ago.
When a robbery aboard the paddle-wheeler on which the event is taking place escalates into a hostage situation, Charlie and Sean have their hands full, and Sean’s abilities are well and truly tested, as are the loyalties of both of them. The author has once again delivered a well-written, taut and suspenseful novel, and it is recommended (as were all the earlier series entries).
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Reviewer: Gloria Feit
Zoe Sharp was born
in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran
on the northwest coast of England.
After a promising start at a private girls' school, she opted out of mainstream
education at the age of twelve in favour of correspondence courses at home. Zoë
went through a variety of jobs in her teenage years. In 1988, on the strength
of one accepted article and a fascination with cars, she gave up her regular
job to become a freelance motoring writer. She quickly picked up on the
photography side of things and she has worked as far afield as the United States and Japan,
as well as Europe, Ireland
and the UK.
Since her fiction writing career took off, she dovetails her photography with
working on her novels. Zoë wrote her first novel when she was fifteen, but
success came in 2001 with the publication of Killer Instinct − the first book
to feature her ex-Special Forces heroine, Charlotte
'Charlie' Fox. As well as the Charlie Fox novels, Zoë's short stories have been
published in anthologies and magazines, and have been shortlisted for the Short
Story Dagger by the UK Crime Writers' Association. Zoë lives in the English
Lake District. Her hobbies are sailing, fast cars (and faster motorbikes),
target shooting, travel, films, music, and reading just about anything she can
get her hands on
Ted and Gloria Feit
live in Long Beach, NY,
a few miles outside New York City.
For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in
lower Manhattan.
Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and
writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly
publications. Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're
now retired, they're able to indulge that passion. Their reviews appear
online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US. On a more personal
note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine
grandchildren between them.
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