Deep Breath is a great ride – once you are on the road, you don’t want to stop. If you are not familiar with the series, this is the seventh and second to last installment in Alison Kent’s SG-5 series (Smithson Group). They all stand alone, although that might not be true for the last book, Beyond A Shadow. More on that later.

Harry van Zandt, aka The Rabbit, is the go-to guy when the impossible needs to be done. You don’t even have to ask him to pull the rabbit out of the hat because he is already handing it to you. He loves his life, his job, his cars, and his friends – and he is damn good at what he does. And if you don’t know it, just ask him. Harry is hot on the trial of a missing government dossier and has the bright idea to use Georgia McLain to help him locate it.

Problem is he isn’t the only person after the documents, and not the only one who thinks Georgia is the gal to lead the way. Enter our baddie, Charlie Castro. Everything and everybody come together at Waco Phil’s diner as Charlie storms his way in, holding the diner’s occupants at gunpoint and demanding Georgia hand over the super secret information. He’s a nice guy, though; he’ll give her until Monday night to return with the goods, but he’ll hold Georgia’s brother hostage in the interim. Oh, and he’s nice enough to send Georgia off with help, only he picks Harry, who is of course undercover as a car collector. Off to Dallas they go.

I am not really sure how all this works. There is a lot of flashing back, switching of POV, returning to the present…and more than a handful of characters. But it does work. The reader jumps into the story with the action already in progress, and can’t help but want to know more. I sped through the book, was never confused, and didn’t want to put it down until I was done.

Deep Breath has a strong suspense plot, but it is also a very steamy read. It’s tough to mesh those two together. I can’t help but think, “You don’t want to be caught with your pants down by the bad guy”, but the romance flows into the plot without distraction. Harry and Georgia are great, not perfect, but a good fit for each other and the story. A neat accomplishment when you consider that both hero and heroine are lying to each other from the start, keeping secrets and their own agendas.

The few problems I had with the story weren’t enough to jar me out of the book or want to throw it. There seemed to be a slight continuity problem when the first night Harry and Georgia spent together didn’t seem to follow earlier activities. Georgia also experiences an out-of-nowhere behavioral change at one point – to say more would provide spoilers. And also, the time frame, from the resolution of the plot to the end of the novel, had a gap I didn’t really understand or like.

Those are truly quibbles because with this book I sat back and enjoyed a really smooth ride. The end might have annoyed me because where it does wrap up the conflict of Deep Breath, it also leads into the final show down with the Spectra bad guys. Since Beyond A Shadow has a release date of December 2006 I can live with that, even being the instant gratification junkie that I am. If that is a big deal, you might want to grab the book now and wait until closer to December to sit down and devour it. Or just do what I will do and plan for a reread.