Kill For Me
Grade : B+

I enjoy romantic suspense, though I find my tastes generally run more to psychological suspense, gothics, and the occasional police procedural. While I read serial killer books or those with e-e-e-v-i-l big plots hatched by villains who almost seem superhuman, they often leave me cold. However, as I read Kill for Me, I realized what quality many of these books missed - and I realized it because Karen Rose has it in spades. It's the ability to create a world. So often one gets lost in the hideous (and often graphically described) violence and the world within which the suspense plot unfolds starts to feel unreal.

This novel marks the end of a series (and I would definitely recommend reading its two predecessors, Die for Me and Scream for Me before tackling this one), with Karen Rose putting together a story that ends it in grand fashion. While part of the book deals with an overarching mystery that has stretched across all three novels in the series, the author also introduces a new couple and a fairly self-contained suspense plot.

Susannah Vartanian, a successful New York prosecutor, has returned to Dutton, Georgia to face an old nightmare that has haunted her for years. Susannah was victimized as a child by an organized group of teenage rapists and she now has the chance to participate in bringing them to justice. Even though it has taken most of her strength to get to this point, Susannah will soon find her resolve further tested.

While she is being escorted to the airport by GBI agent Luke Papadopoulos, he gets a telephone call that takes them both into the heart of a vicious crime. After discovering two survivors near a road, investigators find the bodies of girls left behind in what appears to have been a human trafficking center. For their own reasons, Luke and Susannah are determined to see that the people responsible are found and stopped before anyone else can be harmed.

The suspense plot in this novel is truly excellent. Though the body count is high and the events covered are deeply disturbing, much of the actual violence either takes place offstage or is not described in minute detail. Instead, the author focuses on dialogue and in creating the world in which her characters move. From a logical perspective, an overarching diabolical plot of the type found in this book would seem over the top in most hands. However, Rose makes everything feel disturbingly realistic and entirely too believable.

Likewise, the romance in this book is mostly first-rate. Susannah and Luke seem an unlikely pair at first, but they have good chemistry. Due to her experiences, Susannah has set up many barriers to protect herself from others and seeing Luke gently ease himself into her world was very moving. His patience with and love for Susannah are very affecting, and the two seem to build a true bond. My only quibble with the romance? Each chapter opens with a statement of the date and time, so I know good and well that Luke and Susannah built their deeply felt, amazing bond in all of three days. Given some pieces of Susannah's history, in particular, this just did not strike me as realistic.

Still, even with that quibble aside, I felt satisfied as I finished Kill for Me. This author has a writing style well-suited to the types of stories she tells, and that definitely shows here. The creepy world created by this series will linger in my memory, and I know that I will be quite intrigued to see what this author does next.

Reviewed by Lynn Spencer
Grade : B+

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : February 20, 2009

Publication Date: 2009

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Lynn Spencer

I enjoy spending as much time as I can between the covers of a book, traveling through time and around the world. When I'm not having adventures with fictional characters, I'm an attorney in Virginia and I love just hanging out with my husband, little man, and the cat who rules our house.
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