Review: Great Thriller!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2014
I was fairly excited about reading "Holding Out For A Fairy Tale". At first, I thought that Ms. Thomas was a new author for me, but then I realized that I'd read the previous book in this series and loved it!I loved this one too. What I liked best is that Ms. Thomas really puts the work into the thriller - the plot is fascinating. Ray Delgado is an almost-legendary Hispanic homicide detective in San Diego. He's also a bit of a slut. He's well known as a player, devoted to  one-night-stands. And he thinks, lately, that he's bi, so he's been experimenting. He has no problem getting aroused by the men he takes home, but he does have a major issue with being happy about it. There's the "macho" code he was raised with -  after all, a man isn't a real man if he does "those" things. He's also closeted... and unsatisfied.The best relationship he's had, to date (as brief as it was), was with an FBI agent, a year ago, until he unwittingly insulted the hell out of the man, who walked out, in a huff, and never looked back. Elliot Belkamp drops back into his life when he's assigned a six-year rotation in the San Diego FBI office, the same city in which Ray serves.Add to that the fact that Ray's family is a huge, and notorious, band of cutthroat drug dealers who control Tijuana and thus, all the drugs coming into California. And they're ruthless killers. It was because of his family that he went into law enforcement, and, over the years, he put quite a few of them away. He's a good man, but pretty severely damaged - closeted for most of his life, terrified of relationships, fighting the good fight against his own family.His young cousin, Sophie is a computer genius (as is Ray, by the way) who disappears from her dorm room at University of California San Diego at the same time that millions of dollars disappear from the accounts of the Tijuana cartel run by her relatives.Add in a criminal computer science professor, various attempts on Ray's life, a bombed hotel room, a ransacked apartment, a very strange form of witness protection and two men (although neither realizes it) falling in love, and you have a book that is propulsive, well-written, with tons of interesting and developing characters and situations."Holding Out For A Fairy Tale" is a page-turner. Between the action and Ray trying desperately to come to terms with who he is becoming, there's not a dull page in the book. There's even a castle of Pop-Tarts (don't ask, you'll have to read the book!).I can't wait for Ms. Thomas' next book. I'll be first in line when it's released. Don't miss this one!