Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Catalyst
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 2-Nov
WEBSITE: http://www.rachel-grant.net/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2018016570 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2018016570 |
| HEADING: | Grant, Rachel (Novelist) |
| 000 | 00618nz a2200169n 450 |
| 001 | 10669141 |
| 005 | 20180208073045.0 |
| 008 | 180207n| azannaabn |n aaa c |
| 010 | __ |a no2018016570 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca11188831 |
| 040 | __ |a NJQ |b eng |e rda |c NJQ |
| 100 | 1_ |a Grant, Rachel |c (Novelist) |
| 370 | __ |e Northwest, Pacific |
| 374 | __ |a Novelists |a Archaeologists |2 lcsh |
| 375 | __ |a female |
| 377 | __ |a eng |
| 670 | __ |a Catalyst, ©2017 : |b title page (Rachel Grant) ; About the author (a former archaeologist and four-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart award, she lives in the Pacific Northwest). |
PERSONAL
Married; husband’s name David; children: more than one.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Formerly worked as an archaeologist.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Rachel Grant worked as an archaeologist for more than ten years. Her first excavation was located in the Pacific Northwest, at the site where she met the man who would become the love of her life. Together they traveled the world in search of scientific discoveries, from San Francisco, California, to Kentucky, to the Netherland Antilles, and beyond. Grant’s career completed a circle when she returned to the Pacific Northwest to raise a family. She continues her archaeological adventures through the exploits of her fictional heroines.
"Evidence" Series
Grant is the author of the “Evidence” series of suspense novels, which feature female archaeologists who risk their lives for science and find love along the way. She has won praise for her realistic portrayal of field archaeologists at work and the strong women who choose this rigorous profession. Her fans express equal admiration for novels that balance the science and suspense with ample amounts of hot, steamy sex, explicitly described in no uncertain terms.
Body of Evidence introduces Mara Garrett, a forensic archaeologist who identifies the remains of U.S. soldiers lost or killed in combat. Her career (and her life) will be ended by a North Korean firing squad without the help of special attorney Curt Dominick. He wants something in return, and it is not sex–at least not in the beginning. A reviewer at All about Romance found “plot twist after plot twist … with events finally snowballing into mayhem.” She added: “Identifying the body of evidence to finally capture the culprits is what keeps this book going.”
Incriminating Evidence takes readers into the Alaskan wilderness, where archaeologist Isabel Dawson is searching for traces of prehistoric occupation. Instead, she finds a bleeding man, left for dead. Alec turns out to be her mortal enemy, the operator of Raptor, a defense contractor whom she holds responsible for the death of her brother. Alec recognizes Isabel as the activist who is trying to destroy the Raptor training base. Time heals all wounds, and they forge an alliance to find Alec’s attacker. “This book really has a fun and engaging premise,” observed a reviewer at Smexy Books, and “a lot of detail that makes everything very realistic.”
Covert Evidence features marine archaeologist Cressida Porter as she excavates an Iron Age shipwreck in Turkey. Her reputation is under a cloud because of criminal accusations against her brother. Ian Boyd is a U.S. espionage agent tracking a terrorist leader, whose unwitting courier is none other than Cressida Porter. As described by a reviewer at Smexy Books, “Cressida goes from excited to start this part of her research to bruised, battered, and abducted by a sexy black-ops agent. Ian finds himself “longing for a life he can never have.”
All of the books in this series have inspired commendations for the authenticity of Grant’s descriptions of field archaeology and geographical settings. Most of them won favor for the strength and integrity with which she endows her female protagonists, though a few drew back at what they deemed excessively banal or erotic dialogue. Many found the recipe for success in the perfect balance between authenticity, action, pace, and romance, which almost always results in passion transforming itself into true love.
Tinderbox
Grant tells visitors to her website that she has no intention of ending her “Evidence” series, but in 2017 she also launched a new series. “Flashpoint” adds a military ambience, as it takes place at Camp Citron, a fictional U.S. base located in the African nation of Djibouti. In Tinderbox, archaeologist Morgan Adler is on her way to the base with a precious cargo–the fossilized bones of a hominid species that could extend the history of human evolution backward by millennia. A bomb blast destroys her vehicle and most of the bones, but Morgan is rescued by two Green Berets. Pax Blanchard is especially impressed by the lady scientist, but his orders to protect her prohibit the kind of relationship he would like to explore. The schemes of a power-hungry local warlord and the fate of a missing geologist reveal that Morgan’s life is in much greater danger than anyone expected, and the ultimate prize has nothing to do with the hominid bones. Pax proves himself up to the challenge assigned to him. The sooner he can neutralize the threats, the sooner he can pursue the more intimate adventures that both he and Morgan desire.
According to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, Tinderbox “offers a multilayered, suspenseful plot that’s strengthened by its appealing characters, strong attention to detail, and a healthy dose of romance.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly praised the suspense, but decided that “the romance can be clunky.” A contributor to Smexy Books found, on the other hand, that the lovers’ “lusty feelings become deeper and they both truly come to care for” one another. In a mixed review at All about Romance, Marian Perera made special note of Grant’s realistic setting: “The heat and acacia thorns of the desert, a crowded bazaar, the military base, all of these ring true.”
Catalyst
Camp Citron is a hotbed of intrigue, as American aid worker Brie Stewart learns when she is abducted while helping villagers in South Sudan. Chief Warrant Officer Sebastian Ford recognizes Brie as Gabriella Stewart Prime of the infamous Prime Energy corporation that once threatened the integrity of his tribal reservation back in the state of Washington. She has left the company (and her own family) after sabotaging the pipeline project that could have harmed the Kalahwamish Reservation, but some ties are harder to break than others. Ford is impressed with Brie’s new career path, but cautious of her motivation. Assigned to rescue her from her abductors, he finds her at a slave market, about to be auctioned along with several child hostages. The rescue goes awry when Ford and Brie are stranded in an abandoned village, but their situation gives them time to get to the bottom of her abduction–and fan the flames of a passion that they dare not quench.
Caz Owens reported at All about Romance: “The kidnap and rescue is only the beginning of what is a superbly conceived and plotted story that pitches [Sebastian] and Brie into the sights of a Sudanese warlord with links to the Russian mafia,” not to mention a man from Brie’s past whose obsession with her “is so utterly despicable that it fairly took my breath away.” A Kirkus Reviews correspondent observed that Grant’s “‘Flashpoint’ series offers intelligent romantic suspense that moves with the urgency of a thriller,” yet “the action is gripping without being gratuitously violent.” Once again, Owens, noted, “The attraction that burns between [the protagonists] gradually starts to encompass admiration and respect,” resulting in “a great combination of action-packed, intelligently-written, edge-of-the-seat thriller and sexy romance.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2017, review of Tinderbox; January 15, 2018, review of Catalyst.
Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2017, review of Tinderbox, p. 205.
ONLINE
All about Romance, https://allaboutromance.com/ (May 10, 2016), Rike Horstmann, review of Cold Evidence; (July 2, 2016), review of Body of Evidence; (October 23, 2016), Caz Owens, review of Incriminating Evidence and review of Poison Evidence; (February 13, 2017), Marian Perera, review of Tinderbox; (November 20, 2017), Caz Owens, review of Catalyst.
Rachel Grant Website, http://www.rachel-grant.net (June 26, 2018).
Smexy Books, http://smexybooks.com/ (February 11, 2016), review of Incriminating Evidence; (August 25, 2016), review of Covert Evidence; (February 15, 2017), review of Tinderbox.
Author Bio
Rachel Grant worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for storylines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco; surveying an economically depressed coal mining town in Kentucky; and mapping a seventeenth century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.
In all her travels and adventures as an archaeologist, Rachel has found many sites and artifacts, but she’s only found one true treasure, her husband, David. They met while working together excavating a four thousand year old site about to be destroyed by the expansion of a sewage treatment plant in Seattle. Despite their romantic first meeting, she has no intention of ever setting a story at a sewage treatment plant.
Rachel Grant lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children.
More About Me
Okay, can we talk about me now? I mean, I know this whole website is devoted to me, but it somehow seems like it needs even more me. So here are some details you probably didn’t know you wanted to know.
Archeology testing
That's me in the shallow pit, working with two colleagues at a dig site.
My First Novel
Concrete Evidence was my first published book, but Grave Danger was the first novel I wrote.
Dig History
The Burke Museum has video of me digging at West Point! This is a great presentation put together by the Burke Museum describing the archaeology of West Point, in Seattle.
This is the first job I had as a professional archaeologist, and I worked on this project in the field and in the lab for one year. In the video clips I'm usually wearing a turquoise turtleneck.
I met my husband while working on this dig, and so I get misty-eyed watching the clips. Yes, I cry watching sewage treatment plant videos. Doesn't everyone?
puma graphic
AM commute
Morning commute to dig site
Favorite Things
Current Favorite TV shows:
The Simpsons
The Big Bang Theory
Silicon Valley, and
Game of Thrones.
(can you tell I like humor in my TV?)
Favorite NPR programs:
Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
This American Life
Morning Edition
All Things Considered
sexy archeologist shoes
Gotta love that sexy archeologist footwear!
evening commute back to camp
Evening commute back to base.
Four-time Romantic Suspense Golden Heart® Finalist:
2008 Murder in Situ (Grave Danger, published May 2013)
2011 Concrete Evidence (publilshed April 2013)
2011 Body of Evidence (published August 2013)
2012 Body of Evidence
puma graphic
FAQs
In Order of Most Asked
1. What can you tell me about the movie deal for Body of Evidence?
The deal was announced in Variety in 2016, and all I can share beyond that is Spotted Cow Entertainment is working hard to pull together a team to make it happen. You can check out the Body of Evidence page on their website.
2. When is your next book coming out?
I don't know, but if you sign up for my Mailing List, you'll be among the first to know.
3. What are you working on now?
Right now (August 2017) I’m working on a proposal for my agent about an archaeologist who works for the National Park Service.
4. Now that you are writing the Flashpoint Series, is the Evidence Series done?
No way! I love writing Evidence books and have no plans to stop.
5. Can you tell me about the next Evidence book? Who will the hero be?
I intend to start the next Evidence book this fall (2017). I think the hero will be Sean Logan, but I’m not certain.
6. Will there be a book about JT?
I hope so.
7. Will you write Simone and Jason's story?
Yes. I can’t wait to revisit Coho! But it will be a while because I have Evidence and Flashpoint books to write first. But fans of the book might be excited to find that Bastian in Catalyst is from the Kalahwamish Tribe.
8. Why is Withholding Evidence shorter than your other books?
As I wrote the first draft of Covert Evidence, I realized I wanted to write a novella to introduce the heroine of Covert (Cressida) to readers and show her connection to Mara and Erica, the heroines from the previous books. I wanted to write something short, sexy and fun that ties the Evidence series together and shows Naval History and Heritage Command, where the Evidence books intersect.
It was my first attempt at writing short, and I loved writing Trina and Keith’s story! It was actually only supposed to be about 25,000 words, but ended up being 50,000. I’m not cut out for writing truly short, I think.
9. Who designs your covers?
My fabulous sister, who is also my webmaster and website designer, Naomi Raine created the covers for all the Evidence books and Midnight Sun. Because Naomi is busy with school, Syd Gill is my cover designer for the Flashpoint books.
Grant, Rachel: TINDERBOX
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Grant, Rachel TINDERBOX Janus Publishing (Indie Fiction) $11.99 2, 10 ISBN: 978-1-944571-06-1
An American archaeologist in Africa uncovers a dangerous conspiracy while investigating the discovery of a lifetime in Grant's (Poison Evidence, 2016, etc.) thriller. Dr. Morgan Adler is driving toward the U.S. military base Camp Citron in Djibouti. The base is the only place she knows that could protect the fossilized bones that she's carrying-- part of a stunning paleoanthropological discovery that could change evolutionary science. Cal Callahan and Pax Blanchard, two Green Berets, intercept her near the base, acting on a tip that a local warlord, Etefu Desta, has sent a "message" with her. As they question her, the soldiers discover that her car has been secretly rigged with a bomb. She manages to avoid the resulting explosion, but the bones are destroyed. Afterward, Adler wants to return to the United States; however, she also wants to ensure the remainder of the skeleton, which she calls "Linus," is secure. The U.S. Navy also wants her to complete her contract, so she agrees to stay, and Blanchard is assigned to protect her. He's impressed with her intelligence and resourcefulness, and they feel a mutual attraction; however, a romance is off-limits, as she's a general's daughter and under his protection. When Adler uncovers a conspiracy involving a missing geologist, Blanchard finds himself in a race against time to rescue the woman he's grown to love. This first novel in Grant's Flashpoint series <
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Grant, Rachel: TINDERBOX." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A485105102/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=4f3572b7. Accessed 18 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105102
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Tinderbox: Flashpoint, Book 1
Publishers Weekly.
264.29 (July 17, 2017): p205. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Tinderbox: Flashpoint, Book 1
Rachel Grant. Janus, $11.99 trade paper (260p) ISBN 978-1-944571-06-1
Set in the turbulent country of Djibouti, the first entry in Grant's Flashpoint series works better as suspense than romance. Dr. Morgan Adler, a paleoanthropologist, knows that her discovery of a Lucy-like fossilized human will significantly change what people know about the predecessors of the human species. What she doesn't know is that someone has attached a bomb to her car, planning to detonate it once she's in the secure compound of Camp Citron, the local military base. Fortunately she's saved by Pax Blanchard, head of a Special Forces team stationed in Djibouti. discover (hat the fossils are just a piece of a bigger political puzzle and that the warlord involved is desperate to get his hands on Morgan. Grant's greatest strength is her ability to write gripping suspense with a wonderfully brisk pace, but<< the romance can be clunky>>. The scenes between Morgan and Pax are fine, but don't really help build the relationship and feel a bit episodic. However, readers preferring more political intrigue and great action in their romance will be willing to overlook that. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tinderbox: Flashpoint, Book 1." Publishers Weekly, 17 July 2017, p. 205. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498996951/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=be5533f7. Accessed 18 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498996951
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Grant, Rachel: CATALYST
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 15, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Grant, Rachel CATALYST Janus Publishing (Indie Fiction) $11.99 11, 21 ISBN: 978-1-944571-12-2
When an American aid worker disappears in South Sudan, an unlikely ally comes to her rescue in this sequel.
Gabriella Stewart Prime is the last woman Chief Warrant Officer Sebastian Ford ever expected to see at Camp Citron in Djibouti in Africa. Ten years ago, while working for her family's company, Prime Energy, she defended an oil pipeline project that threatened to undermine Native American treaty rights. While his tribe's land, the Kalahwamish Reservation in Washington state, was not jeopardized, Ford still opposed the project. Despite his anger over the pipeline, he finds her irresistibly attractive ("She had a maturity about her that had been missing before"). In the years since the project, Gabriella cut ties with her family, received a master's degree in cultural anthropology, and changed her name to Brie Stewart. She is now a dedicated aid worker who plans to help villagers in South Sudan displaced by civil war. Later, when she disappears in the aftermath of the burning of a food storage depot, Ford's team is assigned to find her. He discovers she has been abducted and taken to a market where she will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. After a dramatic rescue, Ford and Stewart find themselves falling in love and facing danger when an investigation is launched into the incident. The attack on the depot was not random and Stewart may be a pawn in an international conspiracy. The second novel in Grant's (Tinderbox, 2017, etc.) <
Distinctive and satisfying romantic suspense.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Grant, Rachel: CATALYST." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
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http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522642903/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=0e312ce1. Accessed 18 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522642903
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Body of Evidence
Rachel Grant
Buy This Book
Mara Garrett, our heroine in Body of Evidence, begins in a bad place. She is a forensic archaeologist, who has dedicated her life to searching for the remains of American soldiers who were lost or have died in combat. Mara graduated from Stanford, is beloved by the media, and is the niece of a former Vice-President. Unfortunately, she is also soon to be executed by a firing squad in North Korea as an alleged U.S spy following her discovery in a restricted territory … unless she manages to bring a particular person into North Korea within the next 24 hours.
The person whom Mara manages to bring in to save herself is U.S. attorney Curt Dominick, a shark of the first order who is, rather unsurprisingly, as handsome as he is ambitious and ruthless. He is also prosecuting Mara’s uncle for corruption and war crimes.
At this point in time, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit. It would have helped if the book hadn’t begun with Mara’s death sentence, but rather with an excerpt of how she ends up in Pyongyang at the wrong time. When the book begins, our protagonists are already in the thick of conflict, and the setup is a bit jarring for those not familiar with this kind of writing. It takes concentrated reading to sieve through the information onslaught at the start.
From there, however, the story picks up. Curt wants to extract evidence against Mara’s uncle based on what he learns from her, but she claims her uncle is innocent. Mara was formerly engaged to the son of the head of a shady organization called Raptor (in which her uncle also holds stake), and Curt wants to know how she ended up in restricted territory in the first place. Then, a plane explodes, friends and suspects alike get murdered, conspiracies for biological warfare are exposed, and Mara and Curt have to hit the ground running as dangerous mercenaries chase them through the streets of Hawaii and DC. Yup, a lot happens in this book.
Describing the romantic relationship between Mara and Curt is like describing the motion of a yo-yo. She idolizes him because he’s saved her life; he thinks she’s brave, smart and hot, and they are both very attracted to each other. But every time he wants to make a move on her, she suddenly remembers he is prosecuting her uncle and might suspect her motives, and every time she wants to make a move on him (which is a lot more often), he remembers he’s a shark and that she’s not fully come clean with him. As a result, I often ended up rolling my eyes at them.
There is <
In terms of the numerous plot convolutions and fast pace of this book, Body of Evidence reminds one of John Grisham’s works. It is well-researched and has enough action to have that thriller edge that a lot of romantic suspense novels lack. There’s also a great trial scene towards the end where Curt pushes Mara to testify in court, which reminded me of those Perry Mason books of yore. It’s a good read and certainly has all the ingredients of a dashing action movie in the making. If you like your romance stirred with a healthy dose of peril and legalese, you will like Body of Evidence.
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Book Details
Reviewer: Mandy S
Review Date: July 2, 2016
Publication Date: 08/2013
Grade: B-
Sensuality Warm
Book Type: Romantic Suspense
Review Tags: Evidence series | Romantic Political Thriller
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Tinderbox
Rachel Grant
Buy This Book
Tinderbox, the first novel in Rachel Grant’s steamy and action-heavy Flashpoint series, starts with a bang—literally. Dr. Morgan Adler, a paleoanthropologist working in the Djibouti desert, has discovered a set of bones as old as Lucy. Unfortunately this attracts attention of the wrong kind, from an Ethiopian warlord called Etefu Desta. Morgan drives with some of the bones for the nearest US military base. As the daughter of a general, she’s not intimidated by soldiers.
But she hasn’t met one quite like Master Sergeant Pax Blanchard. He flags her down and saves her from a car bomb – literally throwing her over his shoulder and running for both of their lives, while she screams at him because the explosion destroys the bones. After that, it’s a matter of escaping from various threats together, dealing with the military, deciphering Desta’s purpose (despite the blurb, he’s actually not after the hominid’s bones or Morgan’s bod), and, of course, having lots and lots of sex.
I loved the vividity of the setting in Rachel Grant’s Tinderbox. <
The plot is fast-paced, with intrigue as well as action, since Desta’s real motives aren’t obvious at the start, plus there’s a mole in Morgan’s camp. As for Pax, he’s a great hero. Anything inappropriate with Morgan could derail his career, but after their rocky start, he sees she’s a lot more intelligent and competent than he realized. Very soon, any threat to her brings out the caveman (the narrative’s word, used frequently) in him. There is one sex scene where this supposed Neanderthal declares, “My senses are on the brink of hedonistic overload”, which was unbelievably silly, but the rest of the time I enjoyed him.
His type was the shy, bookish nerds, which was exactly what he’d been until he joined the Army.
Oh, dude. You had me at hello. I just wish he’d been paired up with one of those shy, bookish nerds rather than Morgan.
Morgan is a skilled archaeologist, a black belt in karate, proficient with guns – to the point where Pax thinks of her as a one-woman army – and, of course, she’s smoking hot. She also supplies a local child with coloring books. If you dropped her on the shores of Antarctica, she’d teach the penguins to swim. It got to be predictable after a point, and when she challenged a soldier to a pool match, I knew in advance she was going to kick his ass (while he gaped at hers).
Rationally, this is far better than a damsel in distress who has to be rescued again and again by the hero, but I found Morgan just as impossible to relate to. And there was her worship of testosterone.
…she was also a fan of testosterone.
A big fan.
God, she missed testosterone…
Contact testosterone.
Lovely, lovely testosterone.
There are more mentions of how thirsty she is for testosterone, but this review is long enough already.
The whole purpose of her paean to an androgen, by the way, is to contrast Pax with the kinds of men she dated before. Basically, they were peaceniks who irritated her father (she has daddy issues), plus they believed in feminism and protected the environment. By the time she dismissed these lesser men as “pro-estrogen activists”, I was done with her.
And it really didn’t help when she sexted Pax a picture of her bare breasts, because to her, this is ‘playing’ and she’s horny. Except she sent this at night, when the poor man couldn’t even take care of himself without waking his roommate up, and when he was desperately trying to keep his hands off her for the sake of his job. The sex scenes are plentiful and explicit, though, so I’m sure they’ll work for other readers.
It’s difficult to grade a romance where everything is fun except for the huge stumbling block of the heroine, but in the end, this one gets a B-. I’d try another novel by Rachel Grant, as long as I read enough of the start to know both the main characters were going to work for me.
Buy it at A/iB/BN/K
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Book Details
Reviewer: Marian Perera
Review Date: February 13, 2017
Publication Date: 02/2017
Grade: B-
Sensuality Warm
Book Type: Romantic Suspense
Review Tags: Flashpoint series
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Incriminating Evidence
Rachel Grant
Buy This Book
This is the fourth book in Rachel Grant’s Evidence series, but fortunately, this is a series in which all the stories are self-contained, so it’s not absolutely necessary to have read the other books. There are some characters who have obviously appeared before and it’s clear that certain plot details were planted in previous books, but the author has given enough information here for a newbie like me to be able to dive right in and enjoy.
Incriminating Evidence is a fast-moving, well-paced story with plenty of intrigue, nail-biting moments of peril and action running alongside a sexy and nicely developed romance between an unlikely couple – an introverted archaeologist and a wealthy businessman running for political office.
Isabel Dawson is an archaeologist whose current gig is searching for ancient settlements that could be threatened by the upcoming timber harvest in Alaska. She’s a bit of a loner, so her job of hiking through the remote wilderness suits her and she enjoys it – although right now, she isn’t completely focused on her task. Around a year earlier, her brother Vincent, a soldier, was killed, supposedly on a training mission at Raptor, a private security firm that trains military personnel in combat techniques designed specifically to be employed in the war against terror. Isabel is convinced Vin’s death wasn’t an accident, but her attempts to instigate an investigation have met with dead ends, principally due, she believes, to the fact that Raptor CEO Alec Ravissant ordered a cover-up. She has emails from her brother that indicate he believed he had been kidnapped, tortured and experimented upon, and Isabel is determined to find out the truth by finding the location Vin described. But her plans are disrupted when she literally stumbles across a badly injured man in the woods. She has to make a quick decision. She is miles from her car and from the Raptor Compound, but there is an old settler’s cabin a mile away. If she leaves the man to go for help, there’s the chance that whoever worked him over will come back to finish him off, or that he’ll die of exposure, so she patches him up as best she can, fashions a make-do stretcher, lashes him to it and drags him all the way to the cabin. It’s only once there that she realises that the man whose life she has just saved is none other than Alec Ravissant.
When Alec eventually comes round, Isabel begins to regret her decision to save him; not only is he violent towards her, he’s rude and ungrateful, having her arrested on suspicion of kidnapping him once his security team locates them the next morning. Alec has no memory of what happened to him; he remembers driving and then swerving to avoid something in the road – then nothing until he comes to when Isabel is dragging him to the hut. He quickly realises that even though Isabel Dawson has been a thorn in his and Raptor’s side for some time, she may in fact be the only person he can trust, as there is clearly something untoward going on at the Raptor Compound, and everyone is suspect.
I can’t say much more without spoilers, but the plot is ingenious and very well constructed. Alec and Isabel are great characters who strike sparks off each other from the get-go, and I enjoyed the way the author gradually develops the trust between them. Isabel is a bit skittish; the death of her parents when she was a child, and then of the brother who more or less raised her has made her wary of getting attached to people and places, so she moves around a lot and never puts down roots. Alec comes from old money and was groomed to enter politics practically from the cradle, but veered off the path his family had mapped out for him by spending twelve years in the military. Now, however, he’s ready to face the challenge of the political arena, having discovered that his desire to serve his country and its people has not ended with his departure from the Rangers. As well as being a total hottie, he’s a great guy; quick to own up to the fact that he could have done more to investigate Vincent’s death, and to realise that his feelings for Isabel go way beyond the intense sexual attraction that pulses between them. I liked that there is a real sense of equality between them in spite of their different backgrounds. Isabel is smart, sassy and more than capable of looking after herself in tricky situations; Alec knows that and respects her for it, and while he wants to protect her, he recognises her abilities and her need to be involved with the search for evidence regarding her brother’s death. Ultimately, their romance is believable; the chemistry between them sizzles and the sex scenes are nice and steamy.
I enjoyed the book very much, but I do have one or two niggles about the story overall. Isabel is ready on several occasions to believe the worst of Alec and to run from him, either refusing to believe his explanations or refusing to allow him to make one; and it got a bit old after the first time or two. It also seems that Alec rebuilds his political campaign very easily given all the problems that arise as a result of his relationship with Isabel. I’m not an expert by any means, and certainly not on US politics, but this does seem to have been somewhat hand-waved away.
All in all however, Rachel Grant has crafted a compelling story that revolves around a series of strange attacks and incidents, and an unusual and very cleverly thought-out secret weapon that is scarily plausible. The background detail relating to the military/special-ops aspect of the story is interesting and well-done, and the descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness are very evocative, putting the reader right there. Incriminating Evidence was my first experience of Ms. Grant’s writing but it definitely won’t be my last.
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Book Details
Reviewer: Caz Owens
Review Date: October 1, 2016
Publication Date: 03/2015
Grade: B+
Sensuality Warm
Book Type: Romantic Suspense
Review Tags: Evidence series
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Desert Isle Keeper
Poison Evidence
Rachel Grant
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Poison Evidence is the latest (seventh) book in Rachel Grant’s Evidence series of Romantic Suspense novels, and in it, she looks at the fascinating world of the technology of intelligence gathering and surveillance and how it can be used and adapted by academics seeking to study and enlighten as well as by those using it for far murkier purposes.
I have only read a couple of the books in the series so far, and one of the things I’ve really enjoyed is how the author has incorporated her own background and love of history and archaeology into the stories by having her heroines work in those particular fields, albeit in very diverse ways. I recently read book four, Incriminating Evidence, in which the heroine is an archaeologist who does all her own leg-work in her search for evidence of ancient settlements; here, Ivy MacLeod is a self-confessed tech-geek whose expertise is in geological archaeology and whose recent project of creating CAM – a complex computerised mapping system using infrared and Lidar (a detection system similar to Radar, but which uses lasers) is about to undergo its first field-test.
As this is number seven in a long-running series, this review may contain spoilers for the earlier books.
The past two years have been a really tough time for Ivy. A couple of years back, her husband, Patrick Hill, was exposed as a traitor and arms trafficker who sold weapons to Russian Mafiosa and Islamic terrorist groups; and his arrest and their divorce dragged Ivy’s name through the mud, too. Ivy was not involved with Hill’s treachery, but with the trial about to start, media attention has begun to swing towards her again, even though she is currently half a world away from the US, about to begin mapping a World War II battle site off the coast of a small island in Micronesia.
At a government reception on Palau, Ivy is pleased to see that Jack Keaton – whom she’s nicknamed “Death Valley”, because he’s just that hot! – is also in attendance. In the two years since her life blew up in her face, she hasn’t been interested in men or sex, but over the last few days, the sight of a shirtless Jack, all toned muscle and sleek, smooth skin as he worked on deck of his charter yacht, seems to have re-ignited her libido, so she’s more than happy when he rescues her from the arsehole official who insists on making snide remarks about her ex and speculating on her level of involvement with his illegal activities.
It’s not long after Ivy and Jack have made their way into the garden when all hell breaks loose and the party is crashed by a group of terrorists – her ex-husband’s allies who are out to get their hands on CAM. Jack acts quickly, disposing of as many of the men as he can and then getting Ivy to safety aboard his yacht. Once they’re safe, the adrenaline rush only serves to intensify the attraction that has already been pulsing between them; Ivy hasn’t been with a man since her divorce and Jack is the only one she has wanted in all that time. The sex is hot, frantic and intensely satisfying – even as Jack knows that in the morning, he’s going to have to do something completely despicable.
Because Jack isn’t Jack at all. He’s Dimitri Veselov, a Russian spy embedded and brought up in the US since his early teens. He appeared in the previous book in the series, Cold Evidence, where he helped Luke Sevick (the hero of that book) to prevent a disaster that could have killed millions and wiped out a large part of the Pacific Northwest. Jack/Dimitri disappeared after that, hoping against hope that he would be presumed dead, but that proved not to be the case, and his Russian puppet-masters are once again pulling the strings. If he is ever to secure the release of the two people most dear to him in the world – his younger sister and her son – he must retrieve a prototype Russian surveillance drone that disappeared somewhere near Palau.
Access to CAM is vital if Dimitri is to carry out his mission, but he has to have Ivy’s help as well, as CAM is biometrically coded to her and she is the only person who knows how to operate it. When she finds out that Jack isn’t who she’d believed him to be she is horrified to discover that she’s fallen victim to yet another deceitful bastard. But Dimitri insists that his actions in getting her away have protected both her and the technology, and that he has no intention of harming her. He can’t risk telling her exactly what is at stake for him, but he tries to show her by his words and deeds that he really is doing as he says and trying to keep her safe.
Without giving too much away, Ivy does come to see that Dimitri isn’t one of the bad guys and agrees to help him. Along the way, here’s plenty of action, tech-geekery, steamy sex scenes and a final twist I absolutely didn’t see coming that had my heart breaking for Dimitri as he discovers the depths of the deception that has been practiced upon him for almost his entire life.
There’s a lot going on in this story and quite a few characters from other novels in the series make cameo appearances, most notably Luke Sevick, Ian Boyd (Covert Evidence) and Curt and Mara Dominick (Body of Evidence). But the author has included enough information about these people and how they all relate to each other for this book to work perfectly well as a standalone. In fact, she’s done her job so well that I’m now planning to read them all so I can experience all those stories for myself. The plot is extremely well-constructed and Ms. Grant’s knowledge of and love of her subject shines through as does the fact that her research into the sorts of technology featured in the story (which is mostly fictional – at the moment!) has been meticulous. The characterisation of the two leads is excellent and the chemistry between them is smoking hot, from that first, fiery hook-up through the cat-and-mouse games they play as they metaphorically circle each other and try to work out exactly how far they can trust each other – if at all – to the deepening of the emotional bond that has been there almost from the start. As Rike pointed out in her review of Cold Evidence, Ms. Grant can write a sex scene that scorches the pages but can also write one that shows a growing connection between the lovers that is truly romantic.
The novel’s pacing and the balance between thriller and romance is just about perfect. At no point did I ever feel as though one element was overshadowing the other, and I also enjoyed the archaeological and historical parts of the story. Poison Evidence was pretty impossible to put down, which is exactly what one wants in a romantic thriller, and I have no hesitation in recommending it highly.
Desert Isle Keeper
Cold Evidence
Rachel Grant
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Cold Evidence, the sixth installment in the loosely connected Evidence series, is a romantic suspense novel that manages to take an established pattern and flesh it out with very appealing protagonists and a remarkably realistic touch – a true winner!
Undine Grey is a marine archaeologist involved in the salvage mission of a submarine that sank in the 1950s in the Salish Sea near Seattle. The submarine was on its last trip before demolition and manned by a group of veterans. All this sounds harmless enough, but then the boat above Undine explodes while she is returning from a dive to the wreck, killing her colleagues. She barely survives and is picked up by a nearby boat and taken to decompression just in time.
On that boat happens to be Luke Sevick, with whom Undine had an extremely ill-fated relationship more than ten years earlier, which, as is slowly revealed, had catastrophic effects for both of them. In spite of the emotional turmoil in which he finds himself on seeing her, Luke stays with Undine until she is out of danger. Still, he is shocked to find her outside his door a few weeks later: Undine has been afraid of diving since her accident, but she feels compelled to return to the wreck to discover what’s down there and whether any foul play is responsible for her colleages’ deaths; and Luke is the diver she feels most safe with as a partner.
The past that Luke and Undine share is remarkably painful, even by romance standards, and that is on several counts and may well raise a red flag for some readers. However, Rachel Grant does a good job in distributing the blame evenly and anyway concentrates more on the fallout with its heaps of anger, remorse, and guilt, which has changed both characters’ lives irrevocably.
Not unexpectedly, foul play is responsible for the explosion, and soon Undine and Luke find themselves in deep water indeed. The villain is soon revealed – a bit too much on the moustache-twirling side for my taste – but what saves the suspense plot is the way in which it is anchored in contemporary events and real places, and way the author raises the stakes with each turn of events. At the finish, I found myself biting my fingernails.
Equally fascinating is the love for anything marine that shines throughout every page of the novel. Undine is the daughter of a well-known marine biologist (hence her first name) and more or less grew up in fins. Luke also worked in marine biology before becoming a Navy SEAL and later working for NOAA. The descriptions of diving, of living next to the beach, of loving all marine life, are utterly compelling.
Which brings me to the leads. I loved reading about both, but with a difference. Undine is on the whole a girl next door, if you ignore the world-famous father and the academic background, with thoughts and attitudes and a degree of attractiveness you can relate to as a reader. Luke, on the other hand, is mostly perfection come true. The author works so hard to make him utterly mouth-watering that it shows, and pulled me from my reading now and then. He redeems himself by being truly charming, but I would have preferred him less god-like.
The sex scenes start off quite hot, and I was fanning myself around page 80, wondering how Rachel Grant would top it. Well, she doesn’t. The sex continues hot, but Grant concentrates more and more on the emotional impact and less and less on the mechanics, which become less important for the characters, too, as their love grows. I found that very moving.
There are a few cameo appearances from characters who appeared in earlier novels in the series, but nothing that overwhelms. An originally minor character is pushed into the spotlight on the last pages, and boy do I hope he will be featured in a future novel in the series.
Cold Evidence was my first Rachel Grant book, but you can be sure that it won’t be my last. (Did I mention that minor character I want to read more about?) Even though the book is not about everyday events, it felt grounded. You can see these characters having a life, and also dealing with the unexpected. This is one romantic suspense novel that I highly recommend!
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Book Details
Reviewer: Rike Horstmann
Review Date: May 10, 2016
Publication Date: 2016/02
Grade: A-
Sensuality Hot
Book Type: Romantic Suspense
Review Tags: Evidence series
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Catalyst
Rachel Grant
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I’ve become a huge fan of Rachel Grant’s particular blend of complex, steamy and intricately plotted romantic suspense novels over the past year or so, and have been eagerly awaiting the release of Catalyst, the second book in her Flashpoint series. Like the previous book, Tinderbox, Catalyst is set in a real-life flashpoint, this time in South Sudan, a young nation embroiled in an ongoing civil war, and features characters based at the (fictional) US military outpost of Camp Citron in Djibouti. There are some things in this book that may be difficult to read about – in particular the buying and selling of women and children – and the way that the plight of so many people in desperate need is thrust aside in favour of big business and political expediency made my blood boil on more than one occasion. Ms. Grant tells a gripping, well-paced and impeccably researched story that pulled me in from the start and kept me transfixed until the nail-biting conclusion.
Chief Warrant Officer Sebastian Ford is surprised to recognise a familiar face one night in the bar at the camp – Gabriella Prime, the daughter of Jeffrey Prime Sr., owner of one of the world’s largest energy corporations. The last time Bastian saw her, she was in full ball-buster ‘Princess Prime’ mode – designer clothes, killer heels, full make-up – in her role as Prime Energy’s PR executive, defending the company’s plan to screw over the native American tribes of East Washington by building an oil pipeline that would ignore even the most basic environmental rules. The woman in front of him now, a decade later, is different, though. The outward trappings of the corporate shill and billionaire boss’s daughter are gone; over the last decade, Gabriella Prime has cleaned up, grown a conscience and left her old life behind her. She deliberately sabotaged PE’s plans for the Northwest oil pipeline, cut all ties with her father and brothers, legally changed her last name to Stewart (her mother’s name) and for the past five years has lived and worked under the radar for USAID in South Sudan. Bastian is rather stunned to discover that Brie Stewart is an aid-worker who lives from pay-day to pay-day like everyone else – and maybe a little suspicious that such a ruthless leopard could have changed its spots, but he has to admit to a reluctant admiration for the guts it must have taken to thwart her father’s plans and then to re-invent herself. But that doesn’t tell him what he really wants to know – which is what she’s doing in Djibouti hanging out with the camp ‘spook’, the enigmatic CIA operative, Savannah James.
One month later, the aid station Brie works at is attacked and she and her three co-workers are forced to flee for their lives. Brie manages to evade capture for a couple of days, but her luck runs out and she is taken to the very slave market she had been summoned to Camp Citron to talk to Savannah James about.
Bastian and his team are authorised to get Brie out – but when they discover that the slave market also houses a large number of children, none of the team can bear to leave the kids there and make impromptu plans to get them out as well. Unfortunately, things go awry, and Brie and Bastian are stranded when their vehicle and equipment fall victim to roads made impassable by the heavy rains. They hole up at an abandoned village while Bastian works on a way to get them out of there, knowing they likely haven’t got long before the Sudanese soldiers who originally captured Brie find them. During the few days they spend alone together, the attraction that had sparked between Bastian and Brie back at the camp builds to inferno levels and becomes increasingly difficult for them both to resist – although resist they must. And do. With difficulty. While they await rescue, they try to work out why Brie’s camp was targeted – was it a random attack? Had her family somehow found her and orchestrated the attack to get her back? Or is something even more sinister going on that neither of them can yet comprehend?
<
Once again, Ms. Grant achieves just about the perfect balance between the disparate elements of this romantic thriller. She obviously knows her stuff when it comes to the geo-political background of the region in which the book is set, and the way she utilises that knowledge and interweaves it throughout the story to forge a cohesive, compelling tale of corporate greed, military ambition and terrifying obsession is quite masterful. Her central characters are just as multifaceted as her story and the romance that develops between them simply drips with sexual tension from the moment the pair of them face off at the bar in Camp Citron. Brie and Bastian have more than their share of baggage and neither of them has had any desire for much more than hook-ups and casual sex in the past, but as <
Although some characters from Tinderbox make an appearance here – most notably Pax, Cal and Savanna James – the book works perfectly well as a standalone, and fans of Ms. Grant’s Evidence series might also recognise a certain enigmatic Russian spy who pops up to lend a (very dangerous!) hand. <> Catalyst is an engrossing read and earns a strong recommendation.
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Book Details
Reviewer: Caz Owens
Review Date: November 20, 2017
Publication Date: 11/2017
Grade: B+
Sensuality Warm
Book Type: Romantic Suspense
Review Tags: Flashpoint series
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Review: Tinderbox by Rachel Grant
February 15, 2017 By Mandi 2 Comments
Tinderbox by Rachel Grant (Flashpoint #1)
Released: February 14, 2017
Romantic Suspense
Self Published
Reviewed by Mandi
I’m a really big fan of Rachel Grant’s Evidence series – she does a nice job of balancing suspense and romance with really fun characters. In Tinderbox she starts a new suspense series with a military and adventure emphasis. According to the author’s note in this book, her husband is an archaeologist and has worked in Dijibouti, in the horn of Africa so she carries that knowledge to her books (although events and other places are obviously fiction).
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Tinderbox is energy. This book is fast-paced and fueled with action and a steamy romance. Our heroine Morgan has found the”paleoanthropological find of a lifetime.” A fossil, nicknamed Linus, which Morgan thinks might be three million years old. On top of that, Linus was butchering something when he died, meaning they would see what food he was going to eat. This is a once in a lifetime discovery, and Morgan is thrilled. But things go south when a local warlord targets Morgan and her fossil. Rushing to a nearby military base for assistance, Morgan is stopped outside the base by two special forces, Green Berets. After forcing her out of her car, they realize there is a bomb underneath and rush to take cover. Her car explodes, and so does part of Linus. Devastated, Morgan takes her anger out on our hero.
Master Sergeant Pax Blanchard could care less that a fossil blew up, he is just happy to be alive alongside Morgan. After some meetings, it’s determined that Morgan has mixed herself up with some dangerous people in Dijibouti, and Pax is assigned to be her security detail as Morgan finishes up her work.
Pax and Morgan have immediate chemistry – but Pax is professional and when his commander tells him to not get involved with her, he takes that order seriously. Pax has been in the Army for fourteen years and it’s his life. It’s his passion and his calling and he is not going to let a sexy woman take that away from him. But oh is it a struggle for him.
Although Morgan’s dad is a General and she can’t stand him or his military ways, she can’t help but lust after Pax- and she makes it known. She is very forward with her attraction and very vocal about being denied his sexy body. She made me smile a lot. Morgan surprises him – while she is a very serious palaeontologist with a lot of brain smarts, she is also well rounded in other areas:
“Can you shoot a person if you have to?”
“Do you think these men had anything to do with the explosion?”
“Yes.” He did, but he’d have said yes either way.
“Then I will blow the motherfuckers’ squirrel-sized peckers off.”
(and she does)
Morgan is used to dating the scholarly type. The attentive, caring, quiet guy that respects her. Pfffft…she is so over that now.
But sometimes she hated to admit she might be attracted to a guy who wasn’t so insistent on being understanding. A guy who admitted to liking guns because it was scientifically proven that just touching one upped a guy’s testosterone level.
Just once she wanted to date a guy who was as pro-testosterone as he was pro-estrogen.
She sees that in Pax – he is a gentleman but oh does he have that alpha side that she knows will boss her around when they get naked together. This type of attitude in a man she is craving also reflects her personality as well. She doesn’t hold back when she talks, and her insults can be quite colorful:
“Why would I want balls?” She tried to get a grip on her anger as she adapted her favorite Betty White quote. “Have you ever seen a woman taken out with a simple kick to the crotch? Hell no, because a vagina can take a beating. I’d like to see you squeeze a baby out of your precious, fragile balls.” You intolerant, jizz-headed ass.
It takes a while for these two to hook up due to their circumstances, but the sexual tension is done so well.
“You’re a bad girl, Dr. Adler.”
“You should probably spank me.”
She felt the intensity of his gaze even though she couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses. “Do you like spanking?”
“It depends on the timing. As I’m coming – yes. Pretty much any other time – no.”
“Ah, fuck,” he whispered. “how the hell am I going to get that image out of my brain.”
Pax also says things like this:
“You keep this up, and I end up fucking you, I will not apologize for crawling out of bed five minutes after I come. You got that? I will fuck you and walk away. No emotions.”
“Works for me.”
Sometimes that alpha attitude can work so well for me – and it does in this one. He never comes across as a jerk. Just an alpha military guy looking to do his job and maybe indulge in some lust. Plus in the long-run, he is a good guy and totally lets his emotions into play and treats Morgan very well. As they dance around each other and eventually find their way into bed together, their <
Rachel Grant paints a nice picture of the setting in this one – the details never drag the story down and there is always exciting adventure just around the corner. I’m very much looking forward to book two.
Grade: B+
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Review: Covert Evidence by Rachel Grant
August 25, 2016 By Mandi 1 Comment
25508226
Covert Evidence by Rachel Grant (Evidence #1)
Released: May 26, 2015
Romantic Suspense
Self Published
Reviewed by Mandi
With visions of professional glory, underwater archaeologist Cressida Porter embarks on a research trip deep into the heart of Eastern Turkey. Her dreams turn into nightmares when she becomes the unwitting courier for a terrorist network. Stranded and unable to speak the language, she turns to a handsome and enigmatic security specialist for help, even while fearing he may be behind a violent assault that leaves her vulnerable.
CIA Case Officer Ian Boyd’s mission is clear: follow the courier, identify the terrorist leader, and intercept the microchip before it falls into enemy hands. For Ian, cozying up to the alluring archaeologist to find out where her loyalties lie isn’t exactly hardship duty. But spending time with her proves dangerous when she awakens a <
Attraction wars with distrust as Cressida and Ian are forced on the run. When violence erupts in the already unstable region, Cressida discovers everything she knows about Ian is false. With all secrets revealed, Cressida must decide if she can trust the spy with her life, while Ian faces his own impossible choice: Cressida or his mission.
Not too long ago I read my first Rachel Grant book, Incriminating Evidence, and I really enjoyed it. When Covert Evidence went on sale recently, I grabbed it. This author writes really fun adventure suspense, but also gives us steamy romance. I didn’t love how the relationship played out in this one, but I still enjoyed.
Cressida Porter heads to Turkey for a research mission and to hopefully secure a future grant.
The project was ideal: excavation of an Iron Age shipwreck in the Mediterranean. Run by Dr. Brenner, her graduate advisor, it was her chance to win back his trust and that of the other students from her program. Best of all, Dr. Patrick Hill – the oceanographic explorer whose institute was the primary source of funding for the Iron Age shipwreck excavation – was here for a few weeks, giving her an opportunity to impress him before her proposal even landed on his desk.
The reason she needs to win back trust? Her ex-boyfriend Todd, was recently accused of stealing expensive equipment, and tried to throw Cressida under the bus. Recently cleared of charges, but still feels like people look at her guilty, she is desperate to clear her name. But when she arrives in Turkey, one of the first people she sees? Todd. Shocked that he shows up halfway around the world, she punches him (that’s my girl).
Our hero Ian is a CIA operative who has been looking to take down a terrorist group and got intel that Cressida would be able to lead him to another person involved in this group. While Cressida has no idea any of this terrorist stuff is going on, Ian isn’t so sure of her innocence. While he was impressed by her punch, he secretly follows her as she heads back to her room. From here, bad things start to happen. Cressida’s guide and translator isn’t who she thought. She gets mugged, and since Ian is tailing her, he shows up and helps her out. She doesn’t trust him, but he knows he must force her to go with him – partly because he wants to keep her safe, and partly because she is the only link he has to this terrorist group. <
I think it’s important to note that Cressida really felt like a research, underwater explorer, adventurer. It’s one thing for an author to say that is what her character does for a living, but it’s another to present her that way to the reader. I just read a book where the heroine was a pilot and she never once felt like a pilot to me, and that bothered me. Coming off that book, I appreciated the fact that so much detail went into this character. The setting is fun – and the action is non-stop in this one. Ian is pretty kick-ass too (okay, very kick-ass). He can speak a gazillion languages, he can blend into any situation, he can kill and be calm and collected.
What bothered me a bit is how quickly Cressida fell into lust with Ian. It felt a bit out of place. All of the circumstances coming at her – being abducted, being almost killed, etc.. for her to trust Ian enough to sleep with him – it didn’t fit her personality.
But still a fun book – I really enjoy this author’s voice and I need to read the rest of this series.
Grade: B-
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Filed Under: B Review, Rachel Grant, Romantic Suspense, Self Published
Review: Incriminating Evidence by Rachel Grant
February 11, 2016 By Mandi 4 Comments
24960659Incriminating Evidence by Rachel Grant
Released: March 2015
Romantic Suspense
Self Published
Reviewed by Mandi
I’m really excited to have found this author – I love romantic suspense but I find it hard to find a lot of books that I like in this genre. Annika Martin, aka Carolyn Crane sends out a weekly newsletter with one dirty quote from the book she is reading. That is how I discovered this book. This is a new to me author, and I will definitely be checking out her backlist.
Isabel is an archeologist who looks for signs of prehistoric occupation before the timber harvest comes into this Alaskan forest. Isabel likes her job – hiking through the wilderness of Alaska, she is extremely isolated but feels comfortable with her gun and bear spray handy. That is until she comes across an unconscious man in her path.
Alec is a very wealthy man who is running for a senate seat in Maryland. So why is he unconscious in an Alaskan forest? Even he isn’t quite sure. Alec is the CEO of a defense contracting company called Raptor. Years ago he took his money and bought 30,000 acres of land and the compound where now many elite military and some non-miltary people train. After some encouraging, Alec decided to change paths a bit, and run for the empty senate seat and if he wins he is going to step back from his CEO position at Raptor. But until then, he was going to his Raptor headquarter for some training. But now he is laying in the forest, with a severe headache and bleeding head, and he comes to discover, his nemesis patching him up and dragging him to a nearby abandoned cabin.
Isabel’s brother Vincent was one of those men training at Raptor, when he died. Ruled an accident by some, a suicide by others, Isabel is convinced he was murdered. Alec followed up somewhat with his death, but nowhere near to the extent that Isabel thought appropriate. She has made it her life’s mission to shut down the Raptor compound, and did for two months. But now they are up and running again, and Isabel has a restraining order against her to not go onto their land. She doesn’t realize the hurt man she is patching up and dragging to the cabin is Alec. But she will soon find out.
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These two may initially hate each other – but the romance eventually starts to build. Isabel admits she is in lust with the sexy former Ranger, but she feels guilty for this because she hasn’t 100% convinced herself that he is completely trustworthy. But Alec really is a good guy and she eventually starts to trust him. I really liked both of them – they are tough and they don’t let the other get away with anything. They have really good chemistry.
I also feel like the detail with the military training and weapons and the Alaskan landscape in general are really presented well. <> – something you don’t always get in romantic suspense books.
This is very much a standalone book, but I will be checking out the previous books in the series.
Grade: B+
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