Mercy Thompson is a car mechanic who runs her own garage almost single-handedly. Her life follows a fairly simple pattern: teaching the world's only friendly vampire, Stefan, how to fix his old bus; chatting to undercover cop Tony; and quietly baiting the meticulous Alpha of the local werewolf pack, Adam, by putting a battered old spare-parts VW beetle in the field between their homes where he can see it from his bedroom window and wince.

Mercy knows how to deal with the werewolves - after all, she's a coyote shifter who was fostered by a werewolf family in the heart of the Marrok's own pack (the Marrok being the leader of all the werewolves in North America). So when a boy comes to her garage looking for work, she can instantly tell a few things about him: one, that he's a newly changed werewolf; two, that he doesn't have control yet; and three, that he doesn't belong to Adam's pack. Her suspicions escalate when two men, a poorly trained werewolf and a human, turn up at night to take the kid, Mac, away.

No sooner has she got Mac safe at Adam's then the Alpha's own home is attacked and his teenage daughter Jesse kidnapped. Mercy has good instincts, and a good chance of finding Jesse - but there's a lot more going on here than a simple kidnapping, and Mercy is soon risking her own life to get to the truth.

I'm torn between absolutely loving this and giving it five stars, and holding back a bit on four. It seems unfair to give this four when I gave Dead Until Dark five. So I will probably change my mind a few times.

This book reminded me more of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Underworld series (Bitten etc.) than of Sookie Stackhouse, but really it falls somewhere in-between. All three series are set in a present-day world full of magical and supernatural beings: werewolves, vampires, fae and fairies, mind-readers and so on. In all three, the supernatural are either "out of the closet" or thinking about it - oh except for Armstrong I think, though I've only read two books in the series so far. All three feature a female protagonist who's somewhat supernatural herself: Elena in Bitten is a werewolf, Mercy is a coyote-shifter, Sookie is a telepath. They each attract some powerful, sexy men and they each get caught up in some nasty underworld business. Hence the Urban Fantasy tag.

Of the three my favourite so far is Elena/Women of the Underworld, but only because it's just that much darker, more dangerous, and the books are longer so you can get more involved in the story, characters and world. The Sookie books are short, but this was even shorter. However, it was also tightly plotted and finely structured, so it didn't feel particularly short. It is a teaser, though. Just as you're really getting into it, it ends and you're left with air and that compulsion to go out and grab the next book pronto. So that does put it firmly in the "Loved it!" camp.

Mercy is no goody-goody, which sometimes Sookie is too much of, and she stands up to the domineering, aggressive men (though, with the werewolves especially, she also knows when it's not the time). She has a loner streak, especially since the females in the packs tend to hate her. I don't feel like I know all that much about her, and I was confused about what she is exactly - she says she is a "walker", which "is derived from 'skinwalker', a witch of the Southwest Indian tribes who uses a skin to turn into a coyote or some other animal and goes around causing disease and death." (p.4) That was as much of an explanation as we get, perhaps because walkers are a rare breed and she doesn't know much about her inheritance herself. She's descended on her father's side from Native Americans, and she's immune to some kinds of magic, like some vampire magic, and her ancestors used to hunt the supernatural. I hope her magic is explained more over the series because I'd like to understand it better.

I loved Adam - his magnetic charisma just jumped off the page, and when he first appears and Mercy's describing him, ending with how he was a bit scary, I certainly felt that too. It added an edge of danger and unpredictability to the story, balanced by the joke between Mercy and Jesse about the car that spoils his view (every time he pisses her off she thinks up something new to do to it, like remove a few wheels, paint graffiti on it - it made me laugh), and by the moments of sweetness. He's a scary, sleek-looking Alpha werewolf who hides his liking for Mercy behind threats to her cat. The news that he keeps a photo of Mercy in his bedroom could have been creepy but just made me go "awwwwwww"!

The story focuses on werewolf politics but there's a bit of vampire in there too - the vampire part was really confusing and it seemed like a bit of a plot hole; I have no idea what was going on there, unless it was nothing more than what we saw and heard about. I am a bit perplexed at all the "don't swear in front of the lady" nonsense - people are dying and you're worried about swearing? I just find it patronising.

These paranormal urban fantasy books are really the closest I get to reading mystery-crime-thriller-suspense; I can't enjoy a good mystery if the characters are all boring humans. Briggs also writes fantasy, and I do have Dragon Bones to read, but I think I'll work my way through this series first. Veeeeery curious about book 2, Blood Bound. I hope annoying obstacles aren't thrown in to keep her and Adam from having a real relationship. That's such a cheap television trick and it's even worse when used in books, like in Alyson Noël's YA Immortals series (Evermore etc.).