Review: Worth half a dozen
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 20, 2011
Everyone loves a good police thriller, and this one starts off well enough.  A female police officer is forced to shoot a perp in self defense, while her training officer woozily slumps in an alcoholic haze.  Five years later the tables are turned when Mac Stryker sobers up and returns to the force, only to find that his new training officer is the same Jade Donovan that he had nearly gotten killed before his departure from the force.Tensions run high between them, fueled by the hostility of her supervisor, but the real terror begins when Jade begins receiving dead roses in gold colored boxes, starting with a dozen, and then decreasing daily, one by one, in a twisted count down.A single parent, she relies heavily on her father and his female companion, both recovering alcoholics, to help look after her son Donnie.This is the intriguing set up, but unfortunately the story goes off kilter from about the half way mark.  The machinations of her supervisors leading to her refusal to seek help even from those closest to her is simply not plausible, and the cheesy flavor of the romance bits detracts from the gist of the story.Even ignoring the aforementioned story-killers, the grand revelation of the source of the dead roses falls flat, as this character simply does not fit the crime.On the good side, this is a relatively good effort from a new author, and the suspense/action sections ring true, obviously drawing from real-life experience.Amanda Richards, October 20, 2011