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All right, what is "romantic suspense?" I had no idea. I've been known to pick up a suspense novel once in a while, but romantic suspense? From a guy's standpoint, the concept of "romantic suspense" is usually limited to those moments when he's wondering if he's going to wind up in a horizontal position on the first date. From a literary standpoint ... well, I do have sitting on my bookshelf all of those "Lady From LUST" paperback knockoffs of James Bond that were sold at some of the nation's less reputable outlets in the 1960s.
But taking a look at FLASHPOINT by Suzanne Brockmann, I figured that this wasn't going to be one of those. The cover has a man and a woman in silhouette, walking through an archway with a set of, uh, well, headlights behind them ... I mean, it doesn't knock you over the head, but you don't have to take a college course on "The Films of Federico Fellini" to figure it out, either. FLASHPOINT is going to be more concerned with ripped bodices and heaving bosoms than karate and explosions. Well, actually, there are a few explosions, but more like the kind you would find in a Harold Robbins novel than in, say, Matthew Reilly's SCARECROW.
All of which is to beg the question: how is FLASHPOINT? Well ... it's really, really good. FLASHPOINT, if one wanted to quibble, is a romantic espionage novel. Jimmy Nash is a newly retired CIA agent who now works for Troubleshooters, Inc., a freelancing group specializing in covert operations. Nash, his sidekick, friend Lawrence Decker and a small team of operatives are sent to Kazbekistan ostensibly as relief workers. Their real mission, however, is to track down a missing laptop computer belonging to a deceased al-Qaeda operative that contains information vital to the national security of the United States.
The mission puts Nash in close proximity to Tess Bailey, another Troubleshooters operative. Nash and Bailey had a tryst some months prior to the Kazbekistan mission, after which Nash more or less disappeared from Bailey's life. Nash is actually more nervous about working in close quarters to Bailey than he is about losing his life in Kazbekistan, which is ravaged by war and by earthquakes. To make matters worse, the mission requires Nash and Bailey to masquerade as husband and wife. Nash additionally feels somewhat guilty; having discovered that his buddy Deck was, and is, interested in Bailey, Nash won't do anything about it.
Deck soon acquires his own romantic interest in the person of one Sophia Ghaffari. Sophia, as it happens, is the widow of Dimitri Ghaffari, who was supposed to be the Troubleshooters team contact but was brutally murdered in her presence by one Padsha Bashir, an iron-fisted Kazbekistan warlord who has taken Sophia as his concubine. Ghaffari may well have possession of dodging bullets and tremors and a large amount of duplicity all the way.
Altogether, FLASHPOINT is an impressive work. Brockmann gets points for continuing to explore new directions and doing so quite well. And let's also tip our hats to the marketing folks at Ballantine. FLASHPOINT includes a new short story featuring Sam Starrett and Alyssa Locke from Brockmann's previous novel GONE TOO FAR. While paperback editions of hardcovers include excerpts from forthcoming novels, this is the first time that I can recall a hardcover containing an original short story featuring another of an author's characters. Nice work, from both Ballantine and Brockmann.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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