Rowan Smith is a former FBI agent turned crime novelist. She's survived a traumatic childhood to find success, writing for a living and making movies from the world in her books. She's detached and distant, but she prefers her life that way. Uncomplicated. Private and protected.

All good things must come to an end.

When a series of murders that copy the crimes in her fiction novels begin, Rowan finds herself with a bodyguard. More than one, to tell the truth. She doesn't appreciate being protected and insists she can take care of herself, but when push comes to shove, she realizes that she needs her protector as much as he needs her.

This was a slow starting book for me. As I read the first four or five chapters, I worried that I just wasn't Allison's target audience and that I'd have to put the book down and move on to something else. Fortunately, I didn't give up and found myself getting drawn into the story. Let's hear it for persistance!

I think the procedure is probably what interested me most about the book. The process the characters went through to figure everything out. I'm not entirely sure whether I'm relieved or disappointed that I had the identity of the killer figured out relatively early on. On the one hand, it makes me feel pretty clever. On the other, since I'm not a big mystery reader, and I'm usually wrong, I wonder whether the mystery of whodunit was as complex as it could have been.

I also found the fact that there appeared to be two rival heroes for a while a little disturbing. I'm not fond of being manipulated emotionally and I felt a little like one of the heroes was introduced simply to have someone to use to tug at the heartstrings. It also meant that I was biased against hero #2 and it took me a long time to warm up to him at all.

Still, in the end, I thought it was a pretty good story. I'm told that the books get better as they go, and so I'm more than willing to think well of this one and look forward to the next.