SMOKE SCREEN
Sandra Brown
Simon & Schuster
Thriller
ISBN: 9781416563068
Sandra Brown has composed an enviable body of work over the course of two decades while grabbing the well-deserved double ring of commercial and critical success. It is hard to believe that, since 1981, she has written over 50 New York Times bestsellers. Brown, through a number of elements --- a shift in location, fresh characters, ever-changing plot twists and good old-fashioned hard work --- continues to reinvent herself, with subtlety, from novel to novel, maintaining a quality level that is rarely matched and never surpassed.
Her latest, SMOKE SCREEN, is set in Charleston, South Carolina, and she gets the tone and mood of the city pitch perfect, the result of spending a number of months there as part of the preparation for writing the book. The story begins with Britt Shelley, a local television news personality, waking up in bed with a corpse. The recently departed is Jay Burgess, a Charleston police detective who acquired hero status some five years previously due to his actions with three other individuals in rescuing people from a fire at the main Police Department building. Burgess has parlayed his fame into an enviable career trajectory that has just come to an abrupt end. Shelley, however, has no memory of climbing into bed with Burgess and little memory of meeting him for drinks beforehand. When it develops that Burgess died as the result of asphyxiation, apparently due to being smothered by a pillow, suspicion is immediately cast upon Shelley, who is nowhere to be found.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Shelley was kidnapped by Raley Gannon, a man whose life has been adversely impacted by both Shelley and Burgess. Gannon, who had been a fireman at the time of the Department fire, was placed in charge of the investigation. His efforts to determine the cause of the fire, and at least one suspicious death, had been cut short when he attended a party hosted by Burgess and subsequently awoke with a notorious party girl lying dead next to him. Shelley, who had just started her career in Charleston at the time, began an investigation into the woman’s death, one that cast suspicion on Gannon and ultimately ruined his life and career, and, indirectly, his friendship with Burgess. Gannon, struck by the similarities between what happened to him and Shelley’s own experience, does not believe the deaths to be happenstance but rather connected incidents with the police department fire as their nexus.
Notwithstanding the hard feelings between the two --- Shelley for being kidnapped, Gannon for the irreparable damage done to his life and career --- they form a bristling, uneasy alliance as they begin to investigate the circumstances of the fire and the people who, with Burgess, were hailed as heroes. The investigation is a difficult one. The prickly relationship between the two is the least of their difficulties; Burgess, in addition to being sought by the police, has been targeted by a pair of assassins who have almost succeeded in killing her once and who will not be denied. In order to unravel what has happened to both of them, Shelley and Gannon will have to investigate a fire that has long grown cold and the individuals who were hailed as heroes on that fateful day.
Surprises abound; uncovering the secrets and deceptions of the present uncover deeds that have lain quiet for years. Shelley and Gannon slowly come to the truth of what transpired on the day of the fire, as well as what subsequently happened to them, even as they acknowledge a passionate attraction toward each other that cannot be ignored.
Brown continues to demonstrate that she is a master of writing a plausible, fast-paced mystery that keeps the surprises coming almost until the last few paragraphs. She is also capable of crafting extremely erotic scenes into her books. I may have to modify my attitude toward body piercing as a result of some of the passages here, which I carefully perused again and again. Whether you have read everything that Brown has ever written, or are new to her, SMOKE SCREEN will satisfy completely, never letting you down.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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