I went back and forth between a B- and C+ grade for Last To Die. Was it worth a recommendation? Some parts of the story lacked spark for me, but in the end, the unique twist at the end is worth a read.

Police Sergeant Dani Cole is good at her job, but her recently deceased father’s notoriety first as a dirty cop and then a lackey for a local crime lord has landed her some serious scrutiny. A new case, though, hits close to home. A young woman, a former prostitute whom Dani had helped to clean up her life, is found mutilated in a park. A chunk of hair is missing from her head, and the left side of her face has been destroyed. The evidence leads her to the J. M. Sheridan Foundation’s director Russell Sanders- the mentor and father figure of the foundation’s namesake, Mitch Sheridan, whom Dani had dated and loved 18 years earlier before pushing him away. Mitch is an award-winning photojournalist, recently injured in Iraq, but when he receives a cryptic call from Russell that is interrupted by a sound of a struggle, he comes back.

Dani and Mitch may have not seen each other in nearly two decades, but the same issues come back. Mitch still wants to protect her, and Dani still wants to be independent and not depend on anyone. As the case gets complicated – more missing hookers, black-market baby adoptions, and attacks on Dani – they have to reconcile these issues, and see where the past 18 years have left each of them.

First of all, 18 years? This seems to me like a really long separation, for them to still be sore over it and remember precise incidents and conversations. Ten years would have been more plausible. Nearly twenty is stretching it a bit.

The case itself is interesting. Half the story is a whodunit, but the other half is putting it all together. The author does a good job of unraveling information slowly, rather than either telling us everything in the beginning or not giving us enough to figure it out on our own. There’s a good twist at the end that ties everything together in a way that legitimately surprised and impressed me. That doesn’t happen all that often in romantic suspense. However, I had to question some of the conclusions the police drew. It’s ridiculous that they would rule Russell’s death a suicide when he’s found in a river after someone overheard a struggle between him and some unknown person. It didn’t strike me as a particularly plot-necessary conclusion; actually, things would have progressed better had they been suspicious of his disappearance and death.

I do wish the characters were as original as the plot, though. There was nothing wrong with either Dani or Mitch, but they both lacked spark. They endeared themselves to me more as the story progressed, but they felt flat in the beginning, and it took me a while to feel any of the chemistry that supposedly existed. Their issues seemed to be reduced to a very simple conflict. It’s one thing for Dani to resist against Mitch wanting her to check in every two hours; it’s another for her to get prickly when he makes her coffee.

Last To Die is a decent romantic suspense read. While the romance is certainly there, though, it’s the suspense plot that kept me reading and kept me interested.