From Publishers Weekly
Title's third novel to feature Boston corrections officer Natalie "Nat" Price offers more developed characters and a more believable plot than last year's uneven Inside Out. When an SUV mows down socialite/call girl Jessica Asher outside the townhouse where she entertained her clients, Price's boss, Deputy Commissioner Stephen Carlyle, is suspect number one. Apparently, Asher was blackmailing him with steamy photographs snapped surreptitiously during their trysts. As if that weren't enough, Price also has to contend with an unwanted pregnancy, a feud with rising policewoman Fran Robie and Carlyle's own sons, the disabled Alan and the thuggish Sean—but she never loses her compassion, which seems genuine, not an author's device. During the eulogy she delivers at a memorial service, "Nat was terrified that if she surrendered to the pain of this loss—any one loss—she might collapse under the agony of all the others." Several times, she goes undercover as a call girl—donning a blonde wig, padded bra and designer clothes—to interact, unrecognized, with people she's met in her investigation. This strains credibility a little, but doesn't detract from keeping this a fun, deft book, continuously addictive and puzzling until its last sentences.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
From Booklist
In the third Natalie Price novel, a socialite is murdered, and a sexual scandal is uncovered: the victim is part of a high-class call-girl service. Could Price's boss, the deputy commissioner of corrections (and, apparently, one of the victim's clients), be a killer? To find the answer, Price, a corrections officer, goes undercover and exposes the underbelly of vice lurking just beneath the surface of polite society. Like Iris Johansen and Tammy Hoag, Title has made the genre leap from romance to mystery, and it hasn't always been the most graceful of leaps. It has taken her a while to flesh out her style and characters from the strictly formulaic Harlequin fare she turned out for years. But this is the third Natalie Price novel, and though there may be a patch of unpolished prose here and there, the book's premise is solid, the characters are decently well drawn, and the narrative moves forward at a good clip. Hoag and Johansen took a while to hit their strides, too, and look at them now. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Genre: Mystery
Title's third novel to feature Boston corrections officer Natalie "Nat" Price offers more developed characters and a more believable plot than last year's uneven Inside Out. When an SUV mows down socialite/call girl Jessica Asher outside the townhouse where she entertained her clients, Price's boss, Deputy Commissioner Stephen Carlyle, is suspect number one. Apparently, Asher was blackmailing him with steamy photographs snapped surreptitiously during their trysts. As if that weren't enough, Price also has to contend with an unwanted pregnancy, a feud with rising policewoman Fran Robie and Carlyle's own sons, the disabled Alan and the thuggish Sean—but she never loses her compassion, which seems genuine, not an author's device. During the eulogy she delivers at a memorial service, "Nat was terrified that if she surrendered to the pain of this loss—any one loss—she might collapse under the agony of all the others." Several times, she goes undercover as a call girl—donning a blonde wig, padded bra and designer clothes—to interact, unrecognized, with people she's met in her investigation. This strains credibility a little, but doesn't detract from keeping this a fun, deft book, continuously addictive and puzzling until its last sentences.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
From Booklist
In the third Natalie Price novel, a socialite is murdered, and a sexual scandal is uncovered: the victim is part of a high-class call-girl service. Could Price's boss, the deputy commissioner of corrections (and, apparently, one of the victim's clients), be a killer? To find the answer, Price, a corrections officer, goes undercover and exposes the underbelly of vice lurking just beneath the surface of polite society. Like Iris Johansen and Tammy Hoag, Title has made the genre leap from romance to mystery, and it hasn't always been the most graceful of leaps. It has taken her a while to flesh out her style and characters from the strictly formulaic Harlequin fare she turned out for years. But this is the third Natalie Price novel, and though there may be a patch of unpolished prose here and there, the book's premise is solid, the characters are decently well drawn, and the narrative moves forward at a good clip. Hoag and Johansen took a while to hit their strides, too, and look at them now. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Genre: Mystery
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