Into the Fire

As I have done in the past with Vince Flynn's and Brad Thor's novels, I came upon the 4th (All the Dirty Secrets) of these novels first and read it. It intrigued me enough to start at the top and finish each one. Contrary to the description, I wouldn't call them "thrillers", but they're definitely good suspenseful mysteries.

Marian Lanouette, like many of us, has written all her life but got serious about writing novels a little later in life. She's created a dynamic and attractive cop character in Detective Jake Carrington who in the first couple of novels struggles with getting serious about his women, preferring bedding them without any strings attached.

He suffered a family tragedy early in life and blames himself for it. It rocked the family and tipped his mother over the edge.

Marian's criminal characters ooze those sociopathic psyches and try hard to play Jake. The complex mysteries force the reader to think through the multiple suspects and attempt with Jake and his best friend and partner Detective Louie Romanelli to discover the killer before it's too late for another victim. (Both Jake and Louie are promoted to Lieutenant and Sargent respectively mid-series.)

From killers to former dirty cops still creating havoc with a few of the Blue Line, these are worthwhile stories with minimal profanity and some graphic sex/terms early on in the series which, as is usually the case, proves unnecessary. We get it: Jake likes to get it on. Young enough, handsome dude, stud. His best quality, however, is his devotion to the victims, to get those killers and bring justice for the families of the slain. No one knows how it feels any better than Jake Carrington.

I do recommend this series (skip the graphics) if you like good characters and complex mysteries with family and friendship elements present throughout. As seems to be the case with me and heroes' women, I rarely care much for their choice(s) of girlfriends. Why that is I'm not sure except for a common trait of Type A arrogance. 

Father, thank you for authors. Thank you for spreading around your creativity in the storytelling skills of writers. May each one of us realize from whom any of our abilities originate. Please continue to bless Marian with more stories just for her to tell. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.