REVIEW: Ricochet by Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown lat­est roman­tic sus­pense was a pretty good read. It’s been a while since I’ve read and enjoyed a San­dra Brown book. Her lat­est sounded like some­thing I’d enjoy read­ing and did. The story opens with a mis­trial in Judge Cato Laird’s court.  

The defen­dant is Robert Savich. Savich is a known crim­i­nal in Savan­nah, Geor­gia who has plead not-guilty for the untimely death of a state’s wit­ness. Homi­cide Detec­tives Deedee Bowen and Dun­can Hatcher are frus­trated with the legal sys­tem and Dun­can acts on his frus­tra­tion and is found in con­tempt of court and thrown in jail. Mean­while, Savich goes back to his life of crime and the detec­tives are back to square one.

Soon after the mistrial, the detec­tives are called to a fatal shoot­ing at a res­i­dence nearby. Turns out to be the home of Judge Cato Laird, the supe­rior court judge who let Robert Savich go free. The alleged shooter is his wife, Elise Laird who pro­claims self-defense. From there the story makes quite a few twists and turns as to the self-defense claim slash motive behind the shoot­ing.  Mean­while, Dun­can finds him­self attracted to Elise who is an appar­ent sus­pect in the shoot­ing. Need­less to say, he’s lead detective. Duncan spends much of the story not believ­ing Elise and at the same time he is fiercely fight­ing a strong attrac­tion to her that can cost him his job.

I thought the author with­held motive for far too long which inad­ver­tently dragged the story down a bit. There were a cou­ple of slow spots as a result of this stall. Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was pretty solid for most of the prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters. The vil­lain was one-dimensional with a motive that was pretty self-evident: Savich sold meth and enjoyed liv­ing the life of crime and had no fear of get­ting caught. Savich is cun­ning and smart and has friends in high places. Vio­lence was held to a min­i­mum with noth­ing really all out gory; how­ever I used to read Karin Slaugh­ter so take that com­ment with a grain of salt.

The romance was pretty hot despite the moral and eth­i­cal con­flicts that the author does make time to address in her story. I found it amus­ing that the author was one step ahead of me when­ever a plot point would crop up that made for a loose end or didn’t make much sense at all. Kudos to you for that. Dia­logue was pretty real­is­tic (from my ear); the author was able to wrest emo­tions out of me that included frus­tra­tion and annoy­ance with her characters. The red her­rings had me think­ing all kinds of pos­si­ble motives but none of them panned out. And the plot? It wasn’t the best but it was pretty solid regard­less but your mileage may vary. The author closed up all pos­si­ble loose ends for me and I was ulti­mately entertained.

I use to fault Brown for cre­at­ing sto­ries that were flat out implau­si­ble and hard to read. Seems as if she is back to telling a good story with a sound plot that still requires read­ers to sus­pend some dis­be­lief. No red flags went up with what I was read­ing here. I was truly enter­tained despite some flaws in the story’s struc­ture. I was impressed with Duncan’s cre­den­tials: preacher’s kid, good look­ing, ex-football player who has an innate tal­ent for play­ing the piano which is some­thing he prefers to keeps pri­vate. He also has a crim­i­nal degree. Over­all, I liked him as the male lead in this story.

The author equally gives us back­ground info on his part­ner DeeDee Bowen whose nation­al­ity is never clearly explained, descrip­tion never really clear. Pur­pose­ful? I don’t know.  The fact that her hair was permed gave me some indi­ca­tion of her eth­nic­ity but not really. I assumed she was Black because of the name but the lack of descrip­tion was a bit odd, I thought and I could be wrong. Elise Laird was a tro­phy wife whose pre­vi­ous life was a top­less strip­per. She mar­ries Cato Laird to the cha­grin of his friends who never embrace her. It seems Elise mar­ried Cato for her own dubi­ous rea­sons which took for­ever to spell out.

The romance was a quickie one. It’s roman­tic sus­pense and things tend to move at break neck speed. Sex scenes were pretty hot, good chem­istry even though she’s writ­ten bet­ter. Mys­tery was inter­est­ing; I guessed the bad guys but never the motive. So, in the end, I couldn’t put the book down. Con­tin­u­ing on –the story had a good pace, char­ac­ters were well liked, the author has a good ear for dia­logue. Ric­o­chet had good action scenes but tedious inter­ro­ga­tion scenes (hate those) and a quickie romance it it, so that would war­rant a B+ grade from me.

Ric­o­chet by San­dra Brown is avail­able as an ebook for your instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Enjoy.

Tech­no­rati Tags: San­dra Brown, Ric­o­chet, Roman­tic Sus­pense Review

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: Play Dirty by San­dra Brown
• REVIEW: French Silk by San­dra Brown
• Wednesday’s Child, Gayle Wil­son [Guest Review]
• “Hard to Hold,” Stephanie Tyler
• REVIEW: Rain­wa­ter by San­dra Brown
• Revis­it­ing Vic­to­ria Holt, Queen of Gothic Romance
• REVIEW: Shadow Lover by Anne Stuart
• REVIEW: No Sur­ren­der (Devlin Group Series No.3) by Shan­non Stacey
• REVIEW: Tiger Prince (1985) by San­dra Brown
• Reader’s Cor­ner: There’s a Fine Line Between Roman­tic Sus­pense and Mystery

Tagged as: corruption, Romantic suspense, Sandra Brown