The Code Red mini-line has been on an upswing in its last few entries. I started the twelfth and final book (four additional books precede the mini-line – three published within the Superromance line and the fourth as an anthology) hoping it would continue the trend and end on an up note. Instead, it ends much like it began, with a perfectly acceptable, and perfectly forgettable, entry, in Joanna Wayne’s Justice for All.

In Courage Bay, California, the police recently determined that a number of seemingly unrelated deaths were likely murders committed by the same person. Each of the victims had escaped punishment for some nefarious deed they’d committed: a woman suspected of murdering her elderly parents, an unlicensed contractor whose shoddy work led to the deaths of two people, etc. It appears that someone is taking care of those who managed to evade the criminal justice system. The police and the press have dubbed the killer The Avenger.

Courage Bay Hospital chief of staff Callie Baker is in attendance at a society party when one of Courage Bay’s newest residents collapses. The man is widely believed to be a drug dealer supplying half of Southern California. When the cause of his collapse turns out to be poisoning, it looks like The Avenger has struck again. Soon afterward, Callie receives a call from the party’s hostess, saying that she thinks she’s figured out who The Avenger is. Naturally, she refuses to tell Callie over the phone, insisting that Callie come to her house and claiming “Everyone in Courage Bay is going to be shocked.” Anyone who’s ever read a mystery will probably guess that the woman will either be dead or somehow incapacitated by the time Callie gets there, because if she reveals what she knows this early in the game, the book will be over. Sure enough, when Callie arrives, the woman is dead at the bottom of her swimming pool. This hackneyed device is a telling example of how predictable the story is.

Callie’s involvement in the case brings her into contact with Police Chief Max Zirinsky. The two of them have a shared past due to an incident that occurred eight years earlier (and is very gradually revealed). They’ve managed to avoid talking about it all this time, but now they’re forced to work together to catch the killer. Eventually they decide to pretend that they’re dating in order for Max to gain access to the social circles Callie travels in, because it’s the kind of thing people in series romantic suspense books are always doing. Inevitably, the old feelings between them begin to resurface.

There’s really not much here to discuss. The book does what it’s supposed to do in wrapping up the series, and not much more. The characters are inoffensive, but so underdeveloped they barely exist on the page. The love story is reasonable enough, but also too thin to make much of an impression. The shared incident in their past seems predictably overblown. The mystery isn’t much of one. It’s the usual tepid puzzle that mystery readers will be able to easily solve simply by following the amount and type of attention paid to each of the suspects. It’s fairly obvious who the red herrings are and who the killer must be. In a subplot, the infertile Callie (her inability to have children of her own is revealed early on) deals with a pregnant teenager at the hospital who isn’t sure what she wants to do with the twins she’s carrying.

The author does a capable job explaining all the prior events so that this book does stand on its own and should be understandable by anyone who hasn’t read any of the previous eleven. Of course, I’m not sure why anyone would want to jump in this late of the game. It certainly wouldn’t be a good choice for anyone bothered by books where it’s clear numerous events took place before this one started, complete with long explanatory sections.

Wayne ties together all the various threads introduced earlier in the series neatly, answering the unresolved questions. But now that I know the answers, it just confirms my suspicions that the series was poorly structured overall. For instance, one of the earliest books in the series had a very unsatisfying ending. A suspected killer proclaimed his innocence, then was killed himself. The hero and heroine dismissed his claims of innocence and went merrily on their way as though his death resolved everything, leaving the reader to wonder whether he really was guilty. In this book, we finally get our answer. It’s obvious that the author of that book purposely left that doubt open in order for it to be resolved here. But was it worth it to leave that book with an unsatisfying ending and have her characters look foolish by dismissing the man’s protests (which I found convincing at the time) just to set up this unimpressive storyline? For me, the answer is no.

It looks like for the first time in years Harlequin isn’t launching a new continuity series right after the end of the current one. Maybe that’s for the best. If the Code Red continuity is any indication, the format could use a rest. Hopefully when and if Harlequin launches another mini-line, it will be more consistent and structured better, like the old Tyler, Weddings and Delta Justice series. As for this book, Justice for All is a competent, though unexceptional, conclusion to a series where the same terms too often applied.