I searched for something nice to say about Down and Dirty, and the only thing I could come up with was its originality, a difficult achievement in an industry that recycles story themes ad nauseum. Unfortunately, the uniqueness of the story succumbed to absurdity.

Navy SEAL, Zachary “Pretty Boy” Floyd finds himself in the middle of a war zone, trying to get his new found son out of Afghanistan despite his son’s wishes. Samir, or Sammy as he prefers to be called, is the product of an illicit union between Zach and Esilah, an Afghan woman who had been educated in America. The fact that their union occurred when Zach was on a mission is only one of the more preposterous elements about this book. Esilah has died, and Zach kidnaps Sammy in violation of international protocols. The author conveniently tried to resolve this with the fact that Sammy’s grandfather is a notorious member of the Taliban – and a known terrorist – who abused Sammy. So of course, he must be rescued. This aspect of the book was just too incredible.

The author then thrusts the reader into Northumbria, in 1015 AD, where we meet Britta, a woman hiding in a nunnery to escape the brutal physical and sexual abuse of her family. She trains, and rents herself out as a warrior to survive. From her point of view, we learn that she met Zach earlier when he inexplicably time traveled to her world. They didn’t then, give in to their strong attraction for each other and when Zach disappeared, he left her feeling a strange longing for what might have been.

The reader is then taken back to the present time, where Zach, as punishment for his violations of national and international laws, is assigned to train the new class of WEALS – Women on Earth, Air, Land, and Sea. Yes, GI Jane revisited, except the American military has now progressed to having an entire SEAL training class consisting of women. At this point in the book I stopped keeping count of how many times I rolled my eyes. I found myself asking, are we in the present time or the year 2050? As I figuratively threw the book against the wall, none other than Britta inexplicably drops in during a training session. The use of the word “drop” is to be taken literally here. Of course there is no explanation of how this happened.

Zach and Britta reunite and the magic that began in 1015 gets stronger in 2007. Good thing for Britta that some of the women and men from her time also time travel, so she is not alone. The author deals cursorily with the fact that Britta is now in the 21st century and she avoids all questions about her odd way of speaking and her mannerisms by claiming she is from Norway. Convenient.

Throughout it all, there is still Sammy, remember him? He’s five years old, his mother is dead, his father is absent, he doesn’t speak English, he is subjected to babysitter after babysitter – none of whom is equipped to deal with his issues, the least of which is his language. Clearly the poor child has problems, and the story doesn’t address any of them. There is very little semblance of a relationship between Zach and Sammy, but when Britta enters the picture, Sammy almost immediately, and conveniently adopts her as his mother.

You see my issues with the book. There is an admirable attempt to employ a different plot here. However, there are too many things going on. The author tries to do too much, and in so doing, does little service to the importance of background and character development. From the superficial invocations of the Taliban, to time traveling, the author prefers to skim across the surface of interesting topics which leaves the plot disjointed, and the reader incredulous. Yes, the love scenes were hot, but since when is that never enough to redeem a ridiculously unbelievable, poorly written book?