I haven’t read a series romance in a very long time, but the Harlequin Intrigue line was one of my favorites. After all, what could be better than a fast-paced, sexy romance paired with a mystery? While The Bride and the Mercenary is an entertaining read, it didn’t live up to all my expectations.

Ainslie “Lee” O’Connell’s true love, Seamus Malone, died two years ago. Although they had only known each other a brief time, it was true love at first sight for both of them. Seamus worked for a government bureau known only as the Agency. He was killed the night he proposed to Lee.

Two years later, on the day of her wedding, Lee swears she sees Malone dressed as a homeless man sitting in the church pew. After essentially leaving her fiancé, Pearson, at the alter, she catches up with Malone, who appears to be a paranoid lunatic names John Smith. He can’t be that paranoid, however, because while Lee is there, a team of people try to capture him.

It turns out that Malone is suffering from amnesia due to the head wound he suffered, but after seeing Lee, he remembers most of his past. Unfortunately, he wasn’t completely honest with Lee when they first met, and she isn’t going to like his revelations one bit.

This is definitely an action-packed story. Lee and Malone attempt to investigate who is after Malone – could it be the very agency that he used to work for? And could Malone actually be the horrid assassin know as the Executioner? Malone certainly isn’t a good luck charm, as everyone he comes in contact with ends up dead.

This book had all the elements I look for in an Intrigue: an interesting mystery, snappy dialogue, and a quick moving plot. But the hero drove me nuts. Malone spends the entire book obsessing about his personality and the possibility he might be a cold-blooded killer. I like ’em dark and brooding, but he was too tortured even for me, and I thought Lee deserved a better hero. It got to the point where all the conversations went somewhat like this:

I felt like I was watching a tennis match. Lee, on the other hand, is a great heroine. She has an unusual background in that she’s a former boxer. Apparently many of the women in her family were boxers, something you don’t run across every day of the week. She isn’t about to sit around and let Malone continue his pity party. Lee is terrific and members of her family, including her aunts and brother Sully (Sullivan’s Last Stand), are also great. But some of the other characters were of the wallpaper variety, living just long enough to be killed. Not only that, I figured out the mystery early on – so much for the element of surprise.

This isn’t the best Intrigue I’ve ever read, but there were fun moments and there are much, much worse series books out there, which is one reason I don’t read many anymore. I can recommend this one, but only with some reservations.