Author: M L Buchman

Review: Chinook by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Chinook by M.L. BuchmanChinook (Miranda Chase NTSB #6) by M L Buchman
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure, suspense, technothriller, thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #6
Pages: 360
Published by Buchman Bookworks on March 23, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Miranda Chase—the heroine you didn’t expect. Fighting the battles no one else could win.
When the fastest and most powerful helicopters in the US Army’s fleet start falling out of the sky, Miranda Chase and her team of NTSB crash investigators are called in.
One crash leads to another and they are fast entangled in a Chinese conspiracy to start a war. Only Miranda’s team can stop the trade war from becoming a real one.

My Review:

Chinook is the second book in what looks to be the second quartet of Miranda Chase’s “adventures” as the lead investigator for the NTSB. There’s a lot to unpack in that description.

The NTSB is the National Transportation Safety Board. That’s the agency that investigates aircraft crashes. I say aircraft and not airplanes because the NTSB is called in for helicopter accidents as well as plane crashes. They’re the folks who determine how it crashed, why it crashed, whether any human agency is responsible for the crash and especially what can and should be done to prevent the same type of crash of the same type of aircraft happening again.

Miranda Chase, introduced in the awesome military suspense thriller Drone, is a lead investigator for the NTSB. She’s also THE lead investigator they have, the one who gets called in whenever a crash is particularly strange, particularly difficult to figure out or particularly or even tangentially involves the military. Not that the military services don’t have their own agencies to deal with this kind of thing, but when things get weird, or complicated, or just don’t seem to make sense at first glance OR (very big OR here) when the powers that be in Washington believe that there might be a coverup going on, Miranda and her team get called.

They’re the very best at what they do. And that’s all down to Miranda. Not just because she’s the best investigator they have, but because the team that has gathered around her are each the best at their parts of the investigation and the best at protecting Miranda and keeping her on task.

Miranda Chase is on the autism spectrum, and the hyperfocus that her place on that spectrum gives her is part of what makes her so very good at her job – and so very bad at dealing with the people and politics that want to either get in her way, derail her completely or just remove her from the picture – occasionally permanently.

The first four books in the series (Drone, Thunderbolt, Condor and Ghostrider) were all about putting Miranda’s team together and watching them work. Also, and mostly importantly watching them come together as a team and find the best way to work together, both in spite of and because of all of their collective quirks, idiosyncrasies and baggage from a set of generally messy pasts.

The second series which begins with Raider, at least so far, seems to be about adding the right people to the team and tying up the loose ends dangling after their previous adventures. Along with more than a bit of romance as each team member becomes confident enough of their place in Miranda’s world to reach out for someone who can make their life even more complete.

Even if, in the case of Miranda’s friend and chief geek Jeremy Tranh, the person he’s looking at to fill that kind of role in his life is supposed to be dead.

Escape Rating A: It’s not exactly a secret that I love this series, and this latest entry is absolutely no exception whatsoever.

One of the reasons I love it so much is that Miranda Chase and her team are high-grade (and high-octane) competence porn. They’re good at their jobs. They are, in fact, the best of the best at their jobs. They make an excellent team and they know it. They enjoy being good and capable and that part of the story is always wonderful.

We don’t celebrate competence and excellence nearly enough so it’s always a joy to read.

This series also reminds me of the best of Tom Clancy. The edge of the seat thriller-ness of really good people fighting the good fight on behalf of the actually decent folks in government and the military – while never implying that ALL the people in government or the military are good or even halfway decent. But also not claiming that they are all villains either. Just that they’re human with all the faults and virtues that can imply.

It also Clancy with either a sense of when to stop or a damn good editor or both. Clancy’s later books got to be extremely door-stoppy. This series – actually all of this author’s books – are tight and tense and never run on with themselves.

Another plus, at least so far, is that the individual stories do stand kind of alone, but they also hook back to previous events with at least enough backstory to bring readers for whom it’s been awhile or those new to the series, up to speed.

There are pieces of this particular case that go all the way back to the first book, Drone. And the new member of the team isn’t new to the series. She was on the sorta/kinda opposite side in Ghostrider – and she stole Jeremy’s heart along the way – unwilling to recognize that he kept hers as well.

But there is, as there always is, a crash investigation at the heart of this story, wrapped up in a whole lot of political shenanigans both here and especially in this case, in the highest echelons of a government who is not exactly numbered among the United States friends. It’s up to Miranda and her team to discover what is at the heart of not one but two crashes, a Chinook helicopter in the middle of an airshow in the U.S., and something bigger and considerably more deadly on a beach in Taiwan.

And it’s a tense and suspense-filled ride every step – and on every aircraft – along the way.

The next book in this series is Havoc, coming in late April. I’m already on the edge of my seat in anticipation!

Review: Raider by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Raider by M.L. BuchmanRaider Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: espionage, technothriller, thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #5
Pages: 360
Published by Buchman Bookworks on January 26, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Miranda Chase—the heroine you didn’t expect. Fighting the battles no one else could win.
The US Army’s brand-new S-97 Raider reconnaissance helicopter goes down during final acceptance testing — hard. Cause: a failure, or the latest in a series of cyberattacks by Turkey.
Miranda Chase, an autistic air-crash genius, and her team of NTSB investigators tackle the challenge. They must find the flaw, save the Vice President, and stop the US being forced into the next war in the Middle East. And they have to do it now!

My Review:

There are several ways to approach Raider and the entire Miranda Chase series – and they all work because the series is just so damn good.

Miranda Chase is a savant when it comes to figuring out the cause of aircraft crashes, no matter how often the only way to solve the puzzle is to start from the old Sherlock Holmes aphorism that goes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

So many of Miranda and her team’s solutions veer into the airspace of very improbable indeed, right up to the point where they prove, yet again, that improbability happens – and that they are the best team in the world at figuring it out.

And speaking of the team, another way of approaching this series is as a brilliant exercise in “competence porn”. Miranda and her team are the very best at what they do. Not just Miranda with her bone-deep desire to prevent the kind of crash that killed her parents, combined with the extreme focus on the task accompanied by a complete lack of ability to deal with social cues that is part of her autism spectrum disorder.

But it’s also about the team that she has gathered around her, because they are ALL the best at what they do, even if, as happens to both long-term team member and human factors specialist Mike and newcomer and helicopter specialist Andi, more than occasionally individual team members wonder what it is that they, personally are bringing to Miranda’s table.

Even the best of the best get slapped with impostor syndrome now and again.

Last but not least, for those who experience an occasional sense of nostalgia for the big, meaty, complicated spy games and government con games of the late Tom Clancy , the Miranda Chase series will definitely remind such readers of the internecine government warfare that was at the heart of so many of Clancy’s best – without the heft. (His later books did get kind of doorstoppy.)

Because this adventure, like ALL of Miranda’s adventures, combines plane crashes, government skullduggery, political one-upmanship (also one-upwomanship), brinkmanship that almost but not quite flies over that brink, with spy games and digital warfare on each and every side.

And it’s a thrill-a-minute ride every step of the way.

Escape Rating A: The Miranda Chase series just keeps getting better and better. I’m not the only reviewer saying it, but it bears repeating, so I’m repeating it. The series began in late 2019 with Drone and it has been just the perfect antidote to everything that went wrong in 2020. It features fascinating people solving convoluted problems with the occasional help and just as frequent stonewalling by a government that seems torn between getting shit done and turning on itself.

But competence and capability always triumph in this series, no matter what the odds or who is stacking them up.

This entry in the series ups the ante both in the solution to the series of crashes they are investigating and in their hair-raising escape from the results of that investigation – when it turns out they desperately need to escape a possibly hostile country with the Vice-President, the top-secret parts of Air Force Two, 60-something nuclear warheads and themselves intact while someone back in DC hacks that same country’s cyber warfare capability. It’s all in a day’s work – actually several almost totally sleepless days’ work – for Miranda and Co.

The other fascinating part of this entry in the series, in addition to the usual air crashes and spy games, is that the team has finally become a five-man band with the introduction of Captain Andrea (Andi) Wu, a helicopter pilot and not-fully-trained NTSB agent who was honorably discharged from the Night Stalkers with PTSD after her copilot took a grenade and saved her life and her helicopter. A helicopter that has just gone down in a mysterious crash.

Andi needs a purpose. Miranda and her team need an expert in all things helicopter, as well as someone who can speak fluent “soldier” when their investigation takes them to military bases, as it frequently does.

As this story winds its way from Denali to Groom Lake to Incirlik Air Base, Andi has to pull herself together, make a place for herself on the already tight-knit team, and help solve the puzzle of what happened to the experimental helicopter that she and her partner used to fly in a crash that shouldn’t have happened but absolutely did.

Raider is a spy story. And a military story. A puzzle-solving mystery. It’s Andi’s story. And especially and always it’s Miranda’s story – even if she never sees herself at the center of anything except an investigation.

This series is always exciting, nail-biting, and utterly marvelous. It can be read in any order but it’s especially wonderful if you start at the very beginning with Drone. Be prepared for Miranda and her team to take you on one wild ride after another.

Buckle up! Miranda Chase will be back in March in Chinook.

Review: At the Clearest Sensation by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: At the Clearest Sensation by M.L. BuchmanAt the Clearest Sensation (ShadowForce: Psi #4) by M L Buchman
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, paranormal, romantic suspense
Series: ShadowForce: Psi #4
Pages: 218
Published by Buchman Bookworks on September 28, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Hollywood star Isobel Manella leads a charmed life in many ways: interesting roles, surrounded by friends and family, and the ability to sense precisely what those around her are feeling. Her empathic skills help her and her team shine.

Sailor and film handyman Devlin Jones enjoys the job niche he's created along Seattle's waterfront. His skills as a Jack of all trades keeps him fed, companionship can always be found, and his beloved Dragon sailboat lies moored just outside his back door.

However, when Devlin takes Isobel on an evening sail, he brings aboard far more trouble than he's ever faced before. As an assistant on her upcoming film, he thought he could just sail through the gig. Little did he know she'd completely change the uncharted course of his future.

My Review:

This was a terrific wrap up to a marvelous series. It was a great blend of action, adventure, romance and suspense and tied the entire ShadowForce: Psi series up with a neat little – if slightly bloodied – bow.

Not that I don’t expect to see some of these characters again, as side characters or walk-ons in one of this author’s future series, because I certainly do. He does that, after all, and it’s always lovely to see how people are doing.

But At the Clearest Sensation definitely wraps up the story of this very “special” group. A story that began last summer with At the Slightest Sound and continued through At the Quietest Word and At the Merest Glance to make a bootleg turn and threshold brake into its happy ending for everyone involved in the entire series.

As much as At the Clearest Sensation closes out the entire series, it is also, definitely, primarily about the romance between unofficial team leader Isobel Manella and her current movie’s location expert, Devlin Jones.

Because this series simply couldn’t close without Isobel finding her HEA.

That’s not where the story begins. Where it begins is with Isobel feeling, not like a third-wheel in her brother’s marriage with her best friend (At the Quietest Word, or a fifth-wheel to not just that marriage but her teammate Jesse’s marriage to one of brother Roberto’s fellow ex-Deltas (At the Slightest Sound), but a seventh-wheel to both of those relationships plus the newest HEA between her bestie’s stepbrother Anton and his expert-tracker fiance Kate (At the Merest Glance).

Everyone’s happy, and Isobel is happy for all of them. But as the empathic member of their Psi group, all that happy is more than a bit overwhelming to someone who isn’t sure she’ll ever have the time to find hers.

At least not until Devlin whisks her away for a quiet sail around Puget Sound in his Dragon sailboat. For one evening, Isobel is just “Belle”, and not either the movie star or the leader of the elite ShadowForce. An illusion that nearly shatters the next morning when she discovers that the charming stranger who took her sailing is actually part of the movie crew that she has to “boss” as executive producer and co-director.

But Devlin, the one person whose emotions Isobel can’t read, is able to read Isobel and her team like a book. His “school of hard knocks” education allows him to observe all the little “tells” that reveal that Isobel and her team are something just a bit outside the ordinary.

He’s also all too aware that even in the tightest group, everyone needs someone who is first and foremost in their corner. He’s all ready to be that for Isobel, even before a crazed killer sets his sights on the only light that shines in his own personal darkness.

Escape Rating A-: That grade is kind of for this book and kind of for the series as a whole, because the ShadowForce: Psi series reads like a single story broken into four reading-bite-sized parts. This is one where the emotional payoff for Isobel’s story isn’t complete unless you’ve read from the beginning.

But since the individual parts are short and sweet with just the right touch of danger and suspense, the series makes for a great little binge read.

This series is a mixture of action adventure and romantic suspense, and does an excellent job on both sides of that rather tricky equation. It’s also very much a romance of equals, something that is difficult to do well – but it is one of the hallmarks of this author’s writing. It’s a big part of what I read him FOR.

This entry in the series combines movie-making, stunt-driving, found family, adventure, suspense and Seattle into a satisfying romance that puts the heroine in just the right amount of danger AND lets her be part of her own rescue. Isobel is part of a team, and all of the team participates in that rescue, but she is never a damsel in distress.

As someone who lived in Seattle for a few years, the way that the characters toured so much of the city while scouting locations for the film shoot read like the place I knew – although I’m grateful I moved away just before the demolition of the old Alaskan Way Viaduct began. Which created a traffic nightmare while it was going on.

I loved watching Isobel and Devlin fall for each other, in spite of both of their best intentions not to get serious. Their romance, although it doesn’t take a lot of days, still managed to take up enough space in the story to allow both the reader and the characters to feel it happen.

At the same time, the resolution of the suspense part of the story felt a bit abrupt, but on the other hand I can’t see how it could have been any other way. And I’m very glad that Isobel wasn’t kidnapped or worse. She needed to rescue herself, not BE rescued, because that’s not who the character is.

And the heroine in jeopardy plot is seriously old and stale, while this book definitely is not. But now that the ShadowForce is all wrapped up, I can’t wait to see what adventures this author will take me on next!

.

Review: At the Slightest Sound by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: At the Slightest Sound by M.L. BuchmanAt the Slightest Sound (ShadowForce: Psi #1) by M L Buchman
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, military romance, paranormal, romantic suspense
Series: ShadowForce: Psi #1
Pages: 204
Published by Buchman Bookworks on September 14, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Delta Force recon specialist Hannah Tucker needs out of the Colombian jungle and she needs out now.

Night Stalker pilot Jesse Johnson aims to oblige...until his helicopter is shot down. He finds that more than a little inconvenient.

Stalked by guerrillas, crocodiles, and other jungle unfriendlies, they must learn to control skills they never knew they had — or even existed!

Together they discover an unpredictable psychic ability to project sound and distract their enemies. Though the crocodiles remain unimpressed.

Their introduction to a secret military force, whose unique psi talents lay hidden in the shadows, launches them into a whole new world they never imagined.

My Review:

I read the first three books in the ShadowForce: Psi series in one glorious weekend binge. I had such a good time that I want to push them at everyone, and the best place to start is with the first book, the setup for THIS series, At the Slightest Sound.

So here we are.

The story begins with Night Stalkers helicopter pilot Jesse Johnson crash landing in Colombia on his attempt to rescue Delta operator Hannah Tucker. They’re both more than a bit bruised and banged up, and now they’re both in the jungle in the midst of the guerrilla forces that she was sent to find and he was sent to rescue her from. They’re going to have to rescue each other if either of them is to have a chance of surviving.

But Jesse and Hannah have an ace up their sleeves that they don’t even know they have. Hannah isn’t just very, very lucky at escaping capture, she has an uncanny ability that makes her pursuers look the other way at the most inconvenient moment – at least for those pursuers.

Hannah can throw, not her voice, but sound. Sound that distracts her enemies just when she most needs them distracted. She’s unwilling to admit that she might be a freak – but she and Jesse need that freakish ability of hers to survive. And, they need Jesse’s equally freakish ability to magnify those sounds to get the rescue of Jesse’s rescue to notice two camouflaged people hiding in the middle of a dense jungle from flyover height.

They come out of that jungle, together, caught between an intensive pull to find a way to stay together – in spite of both being lone operators in parts of the service that will pull them apart – and a desperate push to find their way back to some kind of normal, either by denying their strange abilities – or embracing them.

And that’s where things get really interesting, as they receive rather cryptic instructions from Hannah’s equally cryptic boss – to meet up with a group of ex-military and civilian operatives who have powers just as far outside the so-called normal as theirs.

It’s going to be the start of a beautiful friendship. It’s already the start of a terrific romantic suspense series!

Escape Rating A-: This was definitely a case of the right book at the right time. The book I was in the middle of was good but not great, and the one I’d just finished, which was in a similar vein to the ShadowForce series, was at that same not-quite-sweet spot, good but not as great as I’d hoped. And I have a review of the 4th – and it looks like final – book in this series scheduled for the end of the month, so I needed to get caught up.

I was only planning to read this first book, but the series turned out to be a bit like those potato chips – as in you can’t read just one. So I kept right on going, although I’m still saving that final book until next week. I think. Maybe I can resist.

I wouldn’t be able to resist too long, because this series reads more like a single story spread out over four relatively short books than it does four separate stories loosely connected into a series.

Although it is loosely connected to several of the author’s previous series. Which you don’t HAVE to have read to get totally immersed in this one. But they’re fun, adrenaline-inducing reads and if you like ShadowForce you’ll love them too. (If you’re looking for a fantastic way to while away about a month of this pandemic, start with The Night is Mine and get lost in this author’s world for a terrific – and long – time.)

Meanwhile, there’s At the Slightest Sound, and the three threads that it does an excellent job of packing into its rather tight length.

There’s the obvious thread, the high-adrenaline, high-stakes mutual rescue of Hannah and Jesse. Hannah is a Delta operator, she can get herself out of anything, anywhere, anytime. And she usually does. But she’s also a solo operator, not used to either counting on or dealing with anyone else.

Jesse is a helicopter pilot. The best of the best at what he does, just as Hannah is among the elite at what she does. But the one thing Jesse doesn’t do is get himself lost on the ground in unfamiliar territory. Hannah is the one leading their mutual escape, and Jesse has zero problems letting her lead.

The equality of the romantic partners is also one of the hallmarks of this author’s writing – it’s one of the things I read him FOR because it’s still rare and always GREAT to see.

But there are two other pieces to this story. One is wrapped around Hannah’s special talent and her understandable unwillingness to accept that she might be even more “different” than she thought she was. She already knew she was different, just by being a female Delta operator, but this is a step beyond – in more ways than one.

There’s less on this front for Jesse to accept or deal with. His talent only exists in conjunction with hers. He can amplify her signal, but can’t make a single spooky sound on his own. And he’s just plain more laid-back than Hannah.

However, the thing that they both have to come to terms with is that they are falling for each other, that they trust each other implicitly, and that they have an intimate relationship that hasn’t even managed to find a bed to consummate itself in yet, in less than 48 hours. They’ve both held their hearts closed before now, and they’re both having a difficult time accepting that they’re all in on a relationship that’s barely begun.

And that it’s the right thing to do. And feel.

The story of Shadowforce: Psi continues in At the Quietest Word and At the Merest Glance, and the continuing books in the series are every bit as good as this first one. I’m chomping at the bit to read the 4th book in the series, At the Clearest Sensation. Once you get started, I’m certain that you will be too!

That 4th and it looks like final book in the series will be out at the end of the month, and I wanted to be caught up before I started it. I’m definitely glad I did, because this series is complete in the four books, and it kind of IS one story spread out over the four. So start with At the Slightest Sound and get ready for one hell of a wild ride.

Review: Ghostrider by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Ghostrider by M.L. BuchmanGhostrider (Miranda Chase NTSB #4) Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure, technothriller, thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #4
Pages: 354
Published by Buchman Bookworks on June 23, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

An AC-130J “Ghostrider”—the latest variant of America’s Number One ground-attack plane for over fifty years—goes down in the Colorado Rockies. Except the data doesn’t match the airframe.

Air-crash savant Miranda Chase and her NTSB team are sent in to investigate. But what they uncover reveals a far greater threat—sabotage.

It could be a prelude to a whole new type of war; this time one far too close to home.

My Review:

The more I read this series, (I’ve read them all so far and loved every one of them, including this one), the more they remind me of Tom Clancy. Not the politics. Clancy’s viewpoint was all over his books, his political agenda was fairly clear. But the competence porn aspect of Clancy’s work, that all of his operatives knew what the hell they were doing and were heroes because of it, that part is certainly present in Miranda Chase and her series. Along with the smart banter and back-and-forth asides that pepper Clancy’s work.

Miranda Chase and her team are just plain fun to be with, and they are damn good at their jobs. In fact, they are the best team that the NTSB has. It is great watching them work.

Also nail-bitingly tense when they get just a bit too involved with that work, as they do in Ghostrider.

Miranda Chase is a savant when it comes to determining the cause of airplane crashes. She’s also extremely intelligent as well as autistic. And all of her gifts are a part of making her who and what she is – which is totally awesome if not always socially aware. In fact she’s seldom socially aware, but it is NEVER played for laughs.

The Ghostrider in this particular instance is certainly NOT the Marvel character, but rather, like the titles of all the books in this series, an airplane, specifically a military airplane, the Lockheed AC-130J Ghostrider, that has crashed near Aspen. And, like all of the other planes – and plans – that have crashed so far in this series, there’s something “off” about this particular crash and Miranda and her team are called in to investigate.

An investigation that turns up a whole bunch of red flags and something completely weird that would normally take the incident off of Miranda’s docket. She became an NTSB investigator in order to figure out what caused each crash she investigates so that it can’t happen again.

But this crash wasn’t a mechanical or technical failure. It wasn’t even pilot error. It was a deliberate crash caused by the pilot. Miranda can help make planes safer, but she has zero insights in making humans less stupid or insane – or whatever this mess might be attributable to.

She’s about to sign off when a second Ghostrider crashes, this time in California, also due to sabotage, while Miranda is closing out the Colorado investigation. It becomes clear that there’s something bigger and much more dangerous going on.

A something that Miranda and her team find themselves literally in the middle of. And something that some of them might not get out of alive.

Escape Rating A: The previous story in this series, Condor, had a lot to do with the emotional baggage that Miranda’s team is carrying. The series begins with Miranda’s baggage, that she became an NTSB investigator in order to prevent other children from losing their parents in plane crashes. But that story had a lot to do with Holly’s baggage, with the reasons that she left the Australian SAS. This story deals with other people’s baggage. Whole truckloads of it. Or perhaps that should be cargo loads?

The Ghostrider crashes that the team investigates aren’t random, aren’t mechanical, aren’t technical, aren’t pilot “error”. But they certainly are pilot-caused, just that the pilots acted deliberately and not accidentally.

Like many of the stories in this series – and OMG just start with Drone and be prepared for a fantastic binge-read – the reasons for both the crashes involve a whole lot of skullduggery at the highest levels.

Along with a retiring general who wants to go out, not exactly in a blaze of glory, but with the satisfaction of a necessary job done. Alternatively with the satisfaction of taking a whole bunch of bastards that need killing out with him. It’s all a matter of perspective.

One is left with the feeling that his cause is righteous, but his methods create way too much collateral damage and have the potential to create a whole lot more. It’s a question about whether the ends justify the means in a case where there are no easy answers – and there shouldn’t be.

That the heroes and the sorta/kinda villains in this one turn out to be, not exactly on the same side, but not exactly on opposite sides, makes for an edge-of-the-seat thriller that will have readers white-knuckling through the middle and gasping at the end – while still thinking about where the big picture went wrong and what different actions might have made it go right. Or at least right-er.

So a great story, fantastic characters, thrilling action and some thought provoked in the end. A job very well done, both for Miranda’s team and for the author of this terrific series. May there be many, many more!

Review: Condor by M.L. Buchman + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Condor by M.L. Buchman + GiveawayCondor: an NTSB / military technothriller (Miranda Chase) Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure, thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #3
Pages: 428
Published by Buchman Bookworks on March 7, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The Antonov AN-124 Ruslan “Condor”—the heavyweight champ among production cargo jets. Russian tanks, American firefighting helicopters, rescue submersibles, satellites, city-sized power transformers...the Condor hauls them all over the world.

But when one lifts a top-secret payload rated as too dangerous, the US government decides it must take action. Untraceable action. Call Delta Force? SEAL Team Six?

No. They call Miranda Chase, lead crash investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board to fake a crash. Miranda refuses, but the stakes grow higher and higher. Soon she may be too late to stop the new Cold War from becoming the final war.

My Review:

In this third book in the Miranda Chase NTSB series, the team has finally found the fifth man for its five-man band. And team leader Miranda Chase may have finally found somebody of her own who gets her for all the parts of who she is – laser-focused, single-minded, socially clueless, neuro-atypical and pure savant at figuring out what made a plane crash – no matter how much anyone – or everyone – attempts to hide the truth.

Whether they do that hiding before or after the crash she’s investigating hits the ground.

All of the books in this series have been named for the planes that have crashed – the planes that Miranda’s team has come to investigate. A Drone, a Thunderbolt and now a Condor – so far. And this one is no different in that start. But it is certainly different in the way that events play out.

And the story feels like it owes as much to Tom Clancy’s kind of spy games as it does to M.L. Buchman’s brand of military romance. In fact, it feels like the blend may be reaching an optimal mix for all kinds of combustion.

But first there’s a downed plane, a dead crew, a top secret and completely torched cargo, a Russian counter espionage agent and a CIA Director with designs on becoming the Second Lady of the U.S. – and eventually the First.

In the middle of it all, there’s Miranda Chase and her team, figuring out how and why the plane crashed in the U.S. – and how to make another one just like it crash in the middle of Russia – without ever giving the game away to anyone watching on either side of the deadly equation.

And without any members of her team getting bogged down – or taken out – by the weight of the baggage that they brought along for the ride.

Escape Rating A: In this third book in Miranda Chase’s series, it really feels like the team is hitting its stride. They have really begun to gel as a unit, and as a consequence, the individuals that make up the team have begun to trust each other enough to reveal some of the trauma that’s hidden in their pasts.

Miranda’s past, and its effects on her, have been part of the dynamic from the very beginning. She joined the NTSB and learned to analyze plane crashes because her parents died in one when she was a child. What she wasn’t aware of at the time, but certainly is now, is that her parents were CIA agents, and that their plane was sabotaged in a deliberate – and successful – attempt to take them out.

But we’re still learning about the rest of the team, just as they are learning about each other. As a consequence, the operation that provides the edge-of-the-suspense in this outing is wrapped around the team’s strongman – or in this case strongwoman – former Australian Special Forces operative Holly Harper.

Holly feels responsible for the deaths of her Australian team, as she was the only survivor of an operation that went so completely pear-shaped that even the pear would be outraged. Holly’s secondment to US NTSB was her way of putting her ghosts as far behind her as possible – literally half a world away.

She’s scared of being part of a “team” again, fearful that her bad luck has followed her across a very large ocean. But the operation that the team has been sucked into, faking the crash of a Russian military cargo transport in Russian airspace, is a job that requires all of the old skills that Holly hoped to never need again. But if she’s to save her new team, she’ll have to become the badass covert operative she left behind.

Because there’s an equally badass covert operative who is guaranteed to take out all the members of her new team with extreme prejudice. Unless Holly gets her first. Or unless that slimy new Director of the CIA plays them all.

The operation, in all of its many hair-raising and nail-biting parts is a big callback to some of the wilder adventures of the Night Stalkers in Buchman’s first military romance series. That both Holly and surprisingly Miranda come out of this adventure with the possibility of romance in their own respective futures made this entry in the series feel closer to what I was expecting back when I first picked up Drone – a heart stopping action adventure story with a little bit (so far) of heart pounding romance on top.

I can’t wait to see where Miranda and her team go – and which planes fall down in front of them – in the next book in this series, Ghostrider. I already have it on preorder!

I’ve enjoyed this author’s writing since I read his first military romance, The Night is Mine, back in 2012. He has written plenty of terrific books since then, ranging from military romance to action adventure romance to mysteries to  SF to thrillers and some that straddle all the lines. I haven’t read them all – he’s been VERY prolific! – but I’ve read quite a few and enjoyed every one.

So, as part of my Blogo-Birthday Celebration, I’m giving one lucky reader the opportunity to climb aboard one of M.L. Buchman’s thrill-a-minute adventures. The winner of today’s giveaway will get their choice of any one of his books. Whoever wins is in for a real treat of a story!

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Review: Thunderbolt by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Thunderbolt by M.L. BuchmanThunderbolt (Miranda Chase NTSB #2) Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: technothriller, thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #2
Pages: 440
Published by Buchman Bookworks on December 17, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The best ground-attack support fighter jets ever built—the A-10 Thunderbolt “Warthogs”—are falling out of the sky.

The Air Force brass repeatedly schemes to decommission this low-tech jet. They’ve been blocked by soldiers, pilots, and Congress…so far.

The “Hog” lies at the crux of a high-tech struggle for power. An interagency skirmish that now rapidly descends into a battle fought on a global scale.

Miranda Chase, air-crash savant for the National Transportation Safety Board, and her team dive in. The high-risk stakes mount in the battlespace—and a secret from their past could make them the next target. Miranda may become the spark that ignites a war.

My Review:

“Friendly fire” – it sounds kind of warm and snuggly, doesn’t it? In a video game it can be no big deal – except for maybe the resulting trash talk. But in real life, in a real life military situation, it doesn’t matter whether the fire comes from friendlies or foes – because the result is just as deadly no matter who pulls the trigger. It also doesn’t matter whether you know which end of the fire you are on – or why you are on it or why it is happening at all. If it is really happening at all.

The story in Thunderbolt is a wheels-within-wheels political technothriller – the kind the Tom Clancy used to write.

But Miranda Chase isn’t like any of Clancy’s heroes – or anyone else’s. Clarissa Reese, on the other hand, is just the kind of self-centered and villainous operate that Clancy used to wrap whole books around.

And the matchup between Chase and Reese is an absolute doozy every step of the way – even if – or especially because Chase never sees it that way.

All that Miranda Chase ever sees is that there’s a plane (or two, or in this case nine) down, and that it’s up to her to figure out why it happened – so that she can prevent it from ever happening again. Or at least prevent it from ever happening again the exact same way.

After all, that’s why Chase joined the NTSB in the first place, to prevent anyone else from losing their parents the same way that she lost hers – in a crash. Her single-minded focus – and possibly her neuro-atypicality – has made her a savant that even the military calls upon when the situation goes really really pear-shaped. And it makes her a fantastic protagonist for this thrill-a-minute ride of a series.

Miranda Chase doesn’t seem to ever be the person that anyone expects – but when she’s what they need to solve the most complicated problem – she always delivers.

Escape Rating A: I enjoyed Thunderbolt even more than I did the first book in Miranda Chase’s series, Drone. And I liked that one an awful lot. But Thunderbolt is even better – at least in part because the team has already been introduced and set up, so now we get to sit back and enjoy the ride as we watch them work.

Part of what I love about this series so far is the team dynamic. It isn’t quite a “Five-Man Band” or at least not yet, but the roles that the members play do mirror the members of the trope, while at the same time turning the whole thing a bit on its head. Miranda, of course is the leader, and Jeremy is definitely the Smart Guy, but the “Chick” in this group is Mike, the only person whose specialty is human dynamics and not engineering or geekery of any kind. And in a complete subversion, the role of the Lancer (second-in-command) and Big Guy strongman is former SAS operative Holly. So a woman is in the traditional masculine roles while a man is in the traditional female role.

I like a good subversion when it works and this one definitely does.

The other fun thing about this series so far is that both the hero and the villain are women. Women who are at the top of their fields and are both smart and successful. They also represent very different versions of female protagonists/antagonists, as one uses her sexuality as a tool in her arsenal while the other acts as if she doesn’t have any. Another contrast is that one does most of her work through other people, while the other leads from the front. One is very much a manipulator while the other honestly doesn’t understand how other people think or what other people feel well enough to manipulate anyone. Her people follow her because they want to – and with eyes wide open.

I will also say that the while both women are cold in their own ways, it’s Clarissa’s cold calculation of means and ends that really sent chills up my spine. And I hope we get to see her comeuppance in a not too distant entry in the series.

But what makes this book and this series stand out is the edge-of-the-seat thriller of the plot. Just as with the “spheres” that Miranda Chase uses to analyze a crash site, the story begins with a broad focus on a narrow event. There’s a downed plane. Miranda’s team then pokes into, under and around every facet of the crash site and the downed plane. Despite temptation, they do not reach conclusions. They just gather evidence – often right before it blows up in their faces or over their heads. That painstakingly gathered evidence leads, slowly but inexorably, towards the reason why the plane crashed.

That’s it’s never the obvious is what makes Miranda’s investigation so compelling to follow. That someone is out there trying to prevent her from discovering that non-obvious solution is what adds the accelerant to the incendiary device of this story, and puts readers right in the middle of the action watching for the explosion – or its prevention.

I’ll admit that I can’t wait to see what catastrophe Miranda Chase draws as her next assignment, but I’m looking forward to finding out next year in Condor.

“I received a free copy of this title from the publisher for an honest review.” And I honestly loved this story!

Review: Drone by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Drone by M.L. BuchmanDrone: an NTSB / military technothriller (Miranda Chase) Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #1
Pages: 422
Published by Buchman Bookworks on November 19, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

China’s newest stealth J-31 jet fighter goes missing. A C-130 Hercules transport plane lies shattered in the heart of America’s Top Secret military airbase — Groom Lake in the Nevada Test and Training Range.

A supersonic drone flies Black Ops missions from the most secure hangar in the nation.

The CIA, the military, and the National Reconnaissance Office are all locked in a power struggle.
One woman is trapped in the middle. Miranda Chase, lead crash investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, becomes a pawn in a very dangerous game. Burdened with a new team, she must connect the pieces to stay alive. And she must do it before the wreckage of her past crashes down upon her.

My Review:

Drone was nothing like I expected – and that turned out to be an excellent thing. (I’m also thinking that there’s a pun in here somewhere, as a drone was nothing that anyone in the story expected – excellent or otherwise.)

Instead of the military romance or romantic suspense that this author is well-known for – and deservedly so – Drone is much more like a spy thriller. And it feels a whole lot closer to Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games than M.L. Buchman’s The Night is Mine. Or it would if Jack Ryan were more than a bit like Temperance Brennan in Bones.

I’m not mixing metaphors, I promise. And I’ll explain in a bit.

The main story in Drone, the part that leads to the spy thriller aspects, mixes the seemingly mundane with the possibly outre – as exemplified by the location, Groom Lake Nevada, otherwise known as Area 51 – at least in part.

There’s been a plane crash. When there’s a civilian plane crash, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) is called in to determine the reason for the crash. While there the potential element of searching for who to blame, the true purpose is to discover if the crash was preventable and make necessary changes so that it doesn’t happen again – at least not in the same way. But this isn’t a civilian crash.

This particular crash is just weird, as it seems like this military helicopter has crashed in the midst of a secure installation it had no business being in. Jurisdiction has the potential to get very confused – and it does. Along with the usual fighting over turf.

NTSB agent Miranda Chase finds herself diverted from her trip home in order to take charge of the investigation, along with a new team of agents that she has never even met before. Only to find herself facing the business end of a military revolver as the commander of the base does not want her, the NTSB, or anyone else poking around his base.

He has good reason. Figuring out just what that reason is becomes the heart of this book. And it nearly rips out the heart of the investigator, as well as the brains of more than a few pilots along the way.

And it’s the start of what looks to be a fascinating series.

Escape Rating A-: I’ll admit that at first I wasn’t too sure what direction this story was going to take. I mean that in the sense that all of the previous books by this author that I have read (and there have been LOTS) all have a romantic element. So I was expecting that and when it didn’t manifest I wondered whether I was in the right place – so to speak. Once I realized that this was all suspense and no romance, it flew me away at supersonic speeds.

The story rests on the character of Miranda Chase, and she’s certainly an interesting choice for point of view. At the top, I likened Chase to Temperance Brennan (as portrayed in the TV series Bones and not the Kathy Reichs’ books) Like Brennan, Miranda Chase is extremely intelligent, laser-focused, detail-oriented and generally not cognizant of human dynamics in any way. To the point where both women seem to be neuro-atypical, although in what way is never defined. But it makes Miranda an unconventional heroine – and I liked her a lot.

As the first book in the series, Drone also has a strong element of putting the team together. Miranda can’t do it alone – and even if she could, she shouldn’t. At the same time, she has a difficult time bonding with people – or even figuring out why people would want to bond. So the team that coalesces around her, who begin as strangers to her and to each other, need time to gel and find their places. That’s a process that has definitely begun by the end of Drone but still has a long way to go and should provide interesting viewpoints as the series progresses.

But the case that Miranda and her team find themselves in the middle of felt to me as if it came straight out of some of Tom Clancy’s less convoluted – and less long-winded – Jack Ryan stories.

When Miranda and her team arrive at Groom Lake, it’s already clear that something isn’t quite kosher about the crash. Not because it doesn’t look right – although that’s certainly true – but because the base commander is behaving strangely and the military version of NTSB is not investigating the crash site. It’s obvious that there’s a whole lot being hidden, but Miranda only sees the anomalies in the crash itself – which are plenty anomalous. Along with the fact that neither she nor her team have any idea who got them called into investigating this mess – or why.

Even when she figures out how the plane crashed – she still doesn‘t know what made the plane crash. Then she goes to DC to consult with a friend and mentor. And discovers that whatever physically made the plane crash it looks a whole lot like politics was the real cause.

That and the CIA left hand making sure that the Joint Chiefs of Staff right hand did not know what the CIA was doing with military assets and military personnel. This isn’t just a turf war – it’s a turf war with a coverup on top. A coverup that the CIA wants to bury Miranda Chase under – literally if necessary.

That the wheels within wheels turn out to include some truly epic spy games is just icing on a very tasty cake. And does a fantastic job of whetting the reader’s appetite for more books in this series.

I’m very glad that the second book of Miranda Chase’s adventures, Thunderbolt, is coming next month!

Review: Target of One’s Own by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Target of One’s Own by M.L. BuchmanTarget of One's Own (The Night Stalkers 5E) Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: military romance, romantic comedy
Series: Night Stalkers 5E #4
Pages: 366
Published by Buchman Bookworks on January 29th 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

-a Night Stalkers 5E romance-
MISSION: Special Operations Forces barely miss capturing Pakistan’s #1 arms dealer. They know only one thing: he’s a champion driver in the most challenging car race in the world, The Dakar Rally. The Night Stalkers and SEAL Team 6 must join up again to face the race of their lives.

TEAM:
Drone pilot Zoe DeMille
— Her career never prepared her for going into the field rather than sending her drone. Driving dune buggies at Pismo Beach throughout her teen years, oddly did.
SEAL Team 6 Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman
— Trusts no one but his team. Ever!

Zoe convinces Luke that they must go undercover to target their prey in the wildest 5E mission yet. They enter the two-week, 10,000 kilometer race across the dunes, deserts, and mountains of South America to track him down.

But when Zoe’s viral fashion blog—The Soldier of Style—sparks a media frenzy, it threatens the very nature of this Black Op. She can’t outrace the madness. And she hasn’t a clue how to navigate Luke.

My Review:

I’m tempted to review this book merely by paraphrasing the scrawls that one sees on bathroom walls by saying, “for a good time, read M.L. Buchman” and call it a wrap. But that’s a bit short on details. Still correct, though.

Also appropriate to the story, as once upon a time in Pismo Beach, it would have been Zoe DeMille’s name and number on that bathroom wall. But she’s reinvented herself since those dark days.

Twice.

Her public persona is that of “The Soldier of Style: Living in the Cutey-Edgy Budget Battlespace.” It’s Zoe’s public vlog (and associated twitter feed) as a budget-minded fashionista blogger with a definite cute airhead vibe.

And it’s a cover for her real job as a drone pilot – they prefer the term RPA for remote piloted aircraft – for the Night Stalkers 5E. A job that is anything but cute, and at which she is anything but airheaded. The Night Stalkers only take, and only employ, the best of the best of the best. And she is.

But Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman of SEAL Team 6 only sees the cute little airhead persona and doesn’t really register the warrior behind the mask. Only the way she needles him at every turn through the headset that links his team in the field to Zoe’s “coffin” back on base where she controls the eyes in the sky that provide him with mission-critical intel.

At least, not until he’s on the ground in Pakistan, staring at the empty former headquarters of an arms dealing kingpin who clearly got word that ST6 was coming to get him.

Luke looks at the empty garage and sees a dry hole and blown operation. Zoe, looking through his headset, sees a golden opportunity to take down a major player among arms dealers working the shady side.

So she runs with that golden opportunity, and with Luke, straight to Senegal and one of her biggest fans. A man who races in international road rally races. Including the annual Dakar Rally. Luke thinks she’s gone off the deep end – especially as it feels like she’s the one running the op and he’s just her “personal assistant”.

But Zoe has connected the dots and spun one glance at a top flight auto mechanics shop in a remote base with the date of the Dakar Rally circled on a calendar to a strong working hypothesis that their mystery arms dealer is a regular participant in that grueling rally – and that her fan in Senegal is their ticket to the inside track of a lifetime.

It takes Luke a little while to catch up to Zoe’s flash of brilliance – and to figure out that the dots he really wants to connect are the ones that lead to her heart.

Escape Rating A-: I had a great time with this book. I had such a great time that it made me reflect on why this author’s romances always work for me – even while I’ve become aware that I’m reading less romance in general.

The answer seems to be in the characters. Not just the way that the author draws them, because lots of romance authors do a good job of creating interesting characters. But it’s the way that his characters find each other and make a relationship.

One of the things that all too often occurs in romance – in real life too – is that two people come together and meet kind of in their middle. There are always compromises on both sides. But in romance fiction, all too often the compromise results in the woman giving up more of who she is and what she wants to make the relationship work for the man.

It feels like, all too often, she becomes less and he becomes more. In historical romances it can be worse. There are too many time periods where, even if she does maintain her separate identity and career after marriage, it only happens because he allows it to happen. Because society, public opinion, and even the law say that his voice is the only one that counts.

None of that ever happens in one of M.L. Buchman’s romances. The characters begin and end as equals – even as they find a way to both work together and make a romantic partnership. Sometimes they are both equal in the same sphere, as was true in his first Night Stalkers romance, The Night is Mine. Both the hero and the heroine are military officers. Both are warriors. And both remain so even when they marry. Eventually Emily Beale gets pregnant and the situation necessarily changes somewhat, but she remains every bit the kickass heroine she was at the beginning, just in a different venue.

Zoe and Luke are also both warriors, just not in the same way. But they are both at the top of their respective fields – and they remain so at the end. One of the things that makes Luke such a great hero is that he not only eventually accepts Zoe exactly as she is, but that he is able to recognize when it is better that she lead and that he cheers her on as she does. That doesn’t happen nearly often enough, either in romance fiction or in real life.

The story here is also a whole lot of fun. It’s one of those experiences that most people won’t have, but is tremendously fascinating to experience vicariously. The Dakar Rally is a real event, and the story and characters here follow the real course – or at least as much of a course as there ever is. After all, the Dakar is an off-road endurance event. A big part of this story is the way that Zoe and Luke bond, endure and find their target in the midst of this once in a lifetime event.

(If you want to read a romance set while the protagonists are running a completely different but equally dangerous and fascinating race, take a look at Sue Henry’s Murder on the Iditarod Trail.)

Part of the tension in this particular romance is that both Zoe and Luke are damaged and neither of them thinks they are worthy – not of love in general, not of the other in particular. It’s a possible interpretation that Zoe heals Luke’s inability to love, but Luke is not the healer of Zoe, because Zoe has already, for the most part, healed herself. He’s there to hold her as the last of the hard pain finally fades, but she’s already done most of the work.

He’s her reward for doing that work. And for once, we have a hero that’s worth it.

“I received a free copy of this title from the publisher for an honest review.”

Review: Zachary’s Christmas by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Zachary’s Christmas by M.L. BuchmanZachary's Christmas (Night Stalkers White House #4) by M L Buchman
Format: ebook
Source: publisher
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance
Series: Night Stalkers White House #4
Pages: 184
Published by Buchman Bookworks on December 23, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

-a Night Stalkers White House Christmas romance- NAME: Zachary Thomas JOB: Vice President of the United States FAMILY: A distant two-star general and a self-involved Olympic swimming coach NAME: Melanie Anne Darlington JOB: She hasn't a clue FAMILY: White House Chief of Staff and a powerful Southern legacy Zack's political career thrives-his star shines brightly. The only thing missing? Someone to share it with. Anne's brother embraces the White House career he was born to do. Unfortunately, Anne's own future shines as clearly as a snow globe blizzard on a dark winter's night. This holiday season, each day opens a new window to the vista of their future in Zachary's Christmas.

My Review:

There may not be an actual half-life for reading holiday stories after the season, but for me it feels like anytime after Twelfth Night (January 5) is pushing something. Or just gives me a sense of trying to get one last lick of a candy cane that has dwindled down to nothing – at least until the next fall.

So when I received Zachary’s Christmas from the publisher over the New Year’s weekend in exchange for my usual honest review, it seemed like the time to review this was NOW, especially since this is an older holiday title (albeit one I had not read) from one of my favorite authors.

And it’s short – and this was a day when I needed a short book to review. I fell way too far down the Harry Potter fanfic rabbit hole this holiday. My bad – but it was fun.

About Zachary’s Christmas…

In the fictional universe created in the author’s absolutely awesome Night Stalkers military romance series, Peter Matthews is the current liberal president of the U.S. And yes, I wish this aspect of the series were real. I wish it very, very much.

Moving right along…

Zachary Thomas is Matthews’ Vice-President, and looks to be the next nominee for President from their party. It’s Matthews’ second term, so that talk is timely. But one of the interesting things about Zach Thomas is that he is single, never married, and has still managed to have a successful and scandal-free political career.

Into this walks Anne Darlington, whose brother happens to be the current White House Chief of Staff. Anne comes to DC in chilly December to visit her brother, because she’s at a kind of personal crossroads. She’s been the very successful manager of their family’s ranching and restaurant business back in Tennessee, but she’s discovered that it isn’t for her. She’s good at it, but she doesn’t love it. The job, that it. She loves the ranch just fine but doesn’t want to live there.

Her brother Daniel, on the other hand, lives for the ranch and can’t wait for his White House career to be over so that he can go back and run the place. But that’s his dream for later, because right now he’s doing good and important work and doesn’t want to leave it until the job is done.

(Whether helping to clean things up in Washington DC is a job that is EVER done is an entirely separate question not within the scope of either this book, this series or this review.)

Zach meets Anne in her brother’s office and the chemistry between them is instant. Not just the sexual sparks, of which there are plenty, but the intellectual challenge. They meet on multiple levels, and it’s special for both of them.

So special that Zach asks Anne out that evening to hear the holiday concert at the National Botanical Gardens. And these two people start to open up to each other, reaching out towards each other out of their separate loneliness. That type of painful loneliness that happens when you’re busy and surrounded by people all the time, but where you can’t let anyone in and no one really sees the real you.

Their whirlwind affair gives Zach all the time he needs, and it isn’t much, to figure out that Anne is the one woman for him. But between his work and his increasing happiness, he doesn’t see – and Anne doesn’t show or tell him – the problems that brought her to DC in the first place.

So while he thinks they’re on a path to happy ever after, Anne fears that she’s on a path where she becomes an adjunct of someone powerful but not a person with her own purpose – and that’s just the fate she came to DC to escape.

Whether they can find a way for both their needs to get met is anyone’s guess. But there are plenty of people pushing both idiots in the right direction.

Escape Rating B: There were lots of things that I really liked about this story, and one that felt just a bit incomplete or unfinished – hence the B rating.

The setup was a whole lot of fun. President Peter Matthews has been a tertiary character in several books in the previous series, Night Stalkers and its followup series – plural. He is the childhood friend of Emily Beale, the heroine of the first Night Stalkers book, but it is not necessary to have read any of the previous books in any of the previous series (Night Stalkers, Henderson’s Ranch, Night Stalkers White House, White House Protection Force, etc.) I’ve read most of the Night Stalkers but little of the others so far and still got right into Zachary’s Christmas. Not that this one doesn’t make me WANT to go back and read some of the others that I’ve missed!

I liked the romance between Zach and Anne. It was definitely a fast whirlwind, but it worked for this story. I also felt for Anne and just how bowled over she was by the constant presence of both the Secret Service and the Press. Her family is wealthy and powerful, so she’s used to being in public and giving speeches and having people watch her. But the DC goldfish bowl still feels intimidating to her – understandably so.

While I understood her hesitation about throwing herself to the wolves of the Press, the part of the story that felt incomplete was the depth of her self-doubt. She initially turns down Zach’s proposal because she fears being lost in his shadow. But she doesn’t ever talk to him about the issue, nor does she ever explain what brought her to DC in the first place. While I felt for her dilemma, my feeling for her had way more to do with me projecting my feelings onto her than her actually articulating them.

Also, she doubts herself constantly and continually minimizes her own capabilities and her own accomplishments. While we all have self doubt (as women we generally have buckets of it) hers don’t seem founded. They’re not rooted in anything and they are of a depth that just begs for there to have been a root cause – which just isn’t there.

But those minor reservations aside, I still had a terrific time on my visit to the Matthews’ White House, peeking in on this lovely romance. I look forward to going back for more.