Dying to Please
Grade : B

The Linda Howard novels that I reread most frequently are Dream Man, After the Night, and the often reviled Shades of Twilight. Recently I added Mr. Perfect and Open Season to the list. The earlier mid-nineties books are all dark and angsty while the newer efforts combine dark suspense with a touch of humor (sometimes black and/or raunchy) in ways that few authors could imitate. Dying to Please doesn't meld the these elements quite as successfully, but it comes darn close.

Sarah Stevens has a plan. She'll keep taking high-paying butler/bodyguard jobs for another couple of years, add the money she makes to her savings, then take a year or two off to travel the world. Her current job as butler/bodyguard to retired Judge Roberts is going to go a long way towards fulfilling that goal. Hmm, attractive female butler who's also a bodyguard is a bit far-fetched, especially when the book opens with Sarah single-handedly foiling a robbery in the Judge's home. But Linda Howard being Linda Howard, she pulls it off.

She also, once again, has written an alpha male who thinks and talks like a guy. Detective Thompson Cahill shows up when he hears about the robbery. His first reaction regarding Sarah and her job puts her squarely in the bimbo category - only his terms are far more blunt. When he's talking to his guy friends he talks like a guy. He's not waxing poetic about her eyes (although he does privately admire them), he's talking about how hot she makes him. Refreshing in a genre in which men's internal dialogue often sounds anything but male.

Okay, Sarah and Cahill have met. They're attracted but fighting the feeling. She doesn't want to mess up her plan and he's coming out of a messy, painful divorce. Seemingly standard fare. Throw in a couple of murders and Sarah's connection to them and you've got what just about every other suspense author is offering. What those other authors don't have is Linda Howard's down-to-earth, yet complex handling of the elements. Her dialogue is clever and frequently laugh-out-loud funny and/or erotically charged. The plot, though tried and true, is bolstered by a romance that is entirely believable. A believable romance may sound like a required element, but it's just not all that common in today's romantic suspense.

So what's my beef? The slow-building murder/stalking plot worked to build suspense. What didn't work was the author's choice to bring it to fruition just when Sarah and Cahill are facing a very real obstacle to a continuing relationship. Instead it felt like a cop-out; rather than having to genuinely deal with the issues they're facing, Sarah is suddenly in mortal danger and Cahill is going to rush to the rescue. Voila! Relationship difficulties averted by concern for each other - or, "Hey this guy/girl saved my life, guess that betrayal/mistrust thing isn't such a big deal after all." After the danger we're told that they dealt with the problem, but the reader never really sees it. Kind of makes it hard to believe these two would last past the first anniversary.

So does this one join my shelf of Howard re-reads? Yes. Is it the first I'll pick up when I want that old familiar feeling? Probably not.

Reviewed by Jane Jorgenson
Grade : B

Sensuality: Hot

Review Date : May 7, 2002

Publication Date: 2003

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