REVIEW: Play Dirty by Sandra Brown

Play Dirty by San­dra Brown is avail­able in hard­cover, large print hard­cover, audio CD, tape, eAu­dio and ebook from Simon and Schus­ter. There’s a trailer for the book here and an excerpt here for you to read and enjoy if scroll past down the review that is spoi­ler­ish. Release date: August 14, 2007.

Play Dirty by San­dra Brown is a roman­tic sus­pense novel set in Dal­las. The story man­ages to offer up a cou­ple of shock­ing sur­prises for fans (or at least for this fan). Play Dirty is quite sus­pense­ful and kept me up read­ing late into the night. Let me state up front that I am a San­dra Brown fan. I’ve always enjoyed her sus­pense nov­els despite the fact that her plots tend to be pretty implau­si­ble or pretty pre­dictable with char­ac­ters who are not all that lik­able. Some of you may say the same about this book. How­ever, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough once the story got going. What appealed to me about this book was the story fea­tur­ing an ex-football player who has fallen into dis­grace. Redemp­tion seems to be the pre­vail­ing theme in this story and I like those types of sto­ries very much.

After serv­ing five years in prison for rack­e­teer­ing, ex-quarterback, Griff Bur­kett is finally released on parole. The only peo­ple in the world to meet him in Big Spring, Texas is his lawyer, Wyatt Turner and a neme­sis from Griff’s past whose very pres­ence threat­ens Griff’s new found free­dom and sec­ond chance at mak­ing a bet­ter life for him­self. Other than Griff’s rack­e­teer­ing case, there is the mur­der of a bookie that has hung like a heavy cloud of sus­pi­cion over Griff’s head despite his procla­ma­tions of inno­cence to the contrary.

Hav­ing to liq­ui­date assets to pay off his fines, Griff is left with no money and no prospects. His lawyer sets him up in a cheap apart­ment. A stark con­trast to the life of the star ath­lete who had it all until it crashed and burned all around him. Griff com­mit­ted the car­di­nal sin of foot­ball that local folks are not will­ing to for­give nor for­get any­time soon. So, off Griff goes to accept a job offer from an eccen­tric Texas multi-millionaire, Fos­ter Speak­man, who is owner and CEO of Sun­South airlines.

Fos­ter Speak­man and his wife, Laura Speak­man, are regarded as the “golden cou­ple” of Dal­las. The two met when Laura butted heads with his CFO at a bud­get meet­ing. The Speakman’s seem to have it all until the cruel hand of fate inter­venes, leav­ing Fos­ter a para­plegic thereby tak­ing away his man­hood. When I learned what it was the Speakman’s wanted Griff to do, my mouth about fell open to the floor. I remem­ber think­ing: this should be inter­est­ing. The author didn’t dis­ap­point either.

Play Dirty is an apt title for this book. I enjoyed it despite the fact that the sus­pense part of the plot pretty much fell apart for me towards the end. I expected some­thing bet­ter than what I got for the res­o­lu­tion. The author man­aged to sur­prise me a time or two with a cou­ple of plots twists that I didn’t see com­ing. Brown’s trade­mark chem­istry was not in evi­dence here but it was still pretty good regard­less. I don’t think or wouldn’t clas­sify the rela­tion­ship in here as being a “romance” con­sid­er­ing how their rela­tion­ship started. Ms. Brown hasn’t com­pletely aban­doned her romance roots entirely, giv­ing read­ers a few explicit love scenes. Also, I liked how the author resolved the roman­tic sub­plot. I didn’t com­pletely buy into the “I love you” part but the end­ing worked very well for me.

Play Dirty was nicely plot­ted with a good even pace that kept me turn­ing the pages late into the night. Char­ac­ter­i­za­tions were decent. I can’t really think of any loose ends that the author didn’t resolve. So, did Griff change for the bet­ter? Did the author suc­ceed in redeem­ing a char­ac­ter who was described as not being a team player who cared only about him­self and no one else? Did Griff learn from his past mis­takes? Yes. I think he did get redeemed and the author showed us rather than tell us. In the end, I liked Griff. He was a good guy. Play Dirty gets a B+.

Tech­no­rati Tags: San­dra Brown, Rack­eter­ring, Play Dirty, Foot­ball, Roman­tic Suspense