Lisa Jackson is brilliant at creating nail-biting and exciting suspenseful romantic thrillers with some really scary and evil villains and characters that just pull you in.
Cold Blooded is the 2nd book in the New Orleans Series, is the follow up to Hot Blooded ….. and having read most of the series before, I have become quite attached to the characters which appear in each story.
Rick Bentz…I so really like this man…what he has gone through in his life would shatter anyone….losing his job with the LAPD when he killed a kid by mistake, his wife’s infidelity and mysterious death, discovering that he is not the biological father to his daughter but fathered by another man, who is very “close” to him, trying to find a new life in New Orleans whilst battling so many issues and angst, overcoming his drinking problem….but still he is not about to give up..well on women he is…trust issues abound.
Olivia Benchet is quite an interesting character. Talk about dysfunctional family….a grandmother who had the “sight”, which Olivia has inherited, a lush for a mother who just loves getting married and divorced, an ex-con father who has just come out of jail after serving a sentence for murder and who has now discovered he has been saved and found religion…could there be a more screwed up family!!!! How can anyone rise above all that…but indeed Olivia does. I really liked her…she has spunk, not afraid to take chances…wow loved the scene where she and Bentz get it together…pity he had to spoilt it all by his reaction to the situation he finds himself in…attracted to her but unable to break through his issues with women. Boy, did that wife of his do a number on him!!!!!
They first meet when Olivia gives a report to Bentz and his partner, Reuben Montoya (another great character…hope we get to discover more about this hot guy, with some really great stylish dressing issued!!!!) on the visions she has been having about a serial killer, who looks like a priest and who is killing women in staged settings of how female saints had died and who calls himself the Chosen.
They race against time to find the killer before he strikes again…and though I had a few characters in mind, I was kept guessing until almost the end of the book. And what a surprise that was finding out!!!!!!! Not once did I even think it was possible. The suspense just kept building up.
I was really not prepared to what happened to Father James, who is Bent’z half brother, his wife’s lover and his daughter’s real father. He was just an interesting character and I would have liked to have read more about him I just wished he had taken the plunge from the beginning and just maybe he would have found true happiness instead of wasting years questioning his belief as a priest.
Though this series is termed as romance suspense, I did want to see a bit more of the romance bit…..just not enough for me. The chemistry between Olivia and Bentz could have done with a bit more zing…..however, in the next book Lost Souls we meet up with them again and you find out what happens after their HEA in this story..
Story is set in steamy New Orleans (before Katrina), which I really liked and Olivia’s house just suited the mood of the story. Her dog…talk about a weird pooch!!!!!
A few twists in the epilogue..which we have to wait for the next book to discover the answers.
Great read.
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