[close] Bestselling author Julie Garwood has a new calling--contemporary romantic suspense fiction. While longtime fans of Garwood hope she won't forsake the historical romance genre that has been so successful for her, this versatile author is coming into her own as a creator of amazingly complex and detailed suspense novels. In Mercy, Theo Buchanan, the brother of FBI agent Nick Buchanan from Heartbreaker, Garwood's first foray into suspense fiction, meets surgeon Dr. Michelle "Mike" Renard when he throws up on her designer dress at a New Orleans gala. Dr. Mike saves Theo's life with an emergency appendectomy, enabling him to return to Boston and his job as a federal prosecutor.

But Theo can't stop thinking about Mike and her little hometown on the bayou. After concluding an investigation and trial that brings down a powerful organized crime syndicate, Theo receives several death threats and his boss recommends he keep a low profile. What better place to go incognito than Bowen, Louisiana, where the catfish practically throw themselves at your fishing pole and where a certain pretty young doctor is opening her new practice? But when Theo arrives, he finds life in Bowen isn't quite as idyllic as he thought. Someone has ransacked Mike's new office and seems dead set on harming her. As Theo struggles to protect Mike, he uncovers a ring of upper-crust criminals willing to do anything, even murder, to keep their dirty little secret--all $40 million of it--from being discovered. What connection could they possibly have to Mike? And why does everyone under the age of 18 keep calling Theo "Coach"? Join perennial favorite Garwood on a journey into the quirky, close-knit communities of the Louisiana bayou and the journey a man and woman devoted to their careers undertake as they fall passionately in love. --Alison Trinkle [close]