Sandra Brown: Ricochet

Ricochet C-

Elise Laird and Detective Duncan Hatcher

Hunky yet sensitive Detective Duncan Hatcher is called to investigate the gorgeous and wildly manipulative Elise Laird when she kills a burglar in her elegant home, supposedly in self-defense. Complicating the case is that Mrs. Laird is the trophy wife of a patrician judge who dislikes our hero. Worse, her account of the murder is somewhere between sketchy and laughable.

Hatcher finds himself falling for the mysterious Mrs. Laird, even as he uncovers each new fact that seems to suggest that the murder was intentional and the burglar, Gary Ray Trotter, no stranger. Hatcher doubts Mrs. Laird's increasingly weak explanations, but he still can't help thinking about her body...

How to say this in the most kind of ways?

Don’t read this book because it’s not worth your time. You’d probably have more fun weeding all of your acquaintances’ backyards for the next twenty weekends.

Ricochet was another downer, whish is even more disappointing because I know Ms. Brown is capable of writing captivating stories, dangit!

Duncan Hatcher is a detective. He is a good man, working for justice and liberty. He dislikes a judge named something Laird because Laird is making foolish judgment calls. Judge Laird is married to Elise, someone Duncan is highly attracted to.

When there is a murder at her house, everyone agrees that Elise shot the burglar out of self defense. But she comes to Duncan, saying that she is scared that the judge is trying to kill her, a preposterous statement since the judge seems wholly in love and infatuated with his young, hot wife.

Duncan struggles with his feelings for the already married Elise. He is wary of her motives – she may be a cold-blooded killer who is playing the detective on case, or she might be telling him the truth. It is a problem that plagues Duncan and the unthinkable happens when he agrees to meet her at an abandoned house in the middle of the night. This event is predictable – from the start of the book, your eyes itch for Duncan and Elise to get together (after all, Duncan is the hero and Elise is clearly the heroine. They have to end up together, right?). But when the scene came, I was in a mixed frenzy – partially excited that they were together, but still superbly distressed because she’s married.

I figured out what would happen in the end for Elise and Duncan to be redeemed of this adulterous act, but the fact that the honorable Duncan wasn’t able to resist Elise is something that stayed on my mind. On the one hand, he sure was overcome by lust for Elise, only showing how much he was risking to be with her. On the other hand, he was foolish since he himself knew that there was a good chance Elise was counting on him to think with his whoo-hoo.

There was also the interesting tidbit of Duncan being the good son of a pastor. (Do pastor’s son act in such ways?) I know that it is a grossly huge stereotype to think that the children of pastors ought to be goody-goods, but at the same time, I don’t recall pastors raising their children to be promiscuous…(not saying that Duncan was unspeakably promiscuous, but….)

As you can see, this book had me in titters, really over nothing.

But this isn’t the reason for the less than pleasant grade. The romance was not believable to be love, but it was clear that the characters had full lust for each other. So when they told each other that they loved each other, I thought, “bullocks!” The suspense was good – I was confused as to whether Elise was evil or not, but there were times when I desperately wanted to skip ahead to the parts with Elise and Duncan… parts that weren’t really even that romantic.

Read, if you must, but have low expectations. Then maybe, you won’t be a sorely disappointed.