JIGSAW

SHE'D PUT HERSELF IN HIS HANDS BEFORE... Headlights in a blizzard, a car following too close, too fast, left Bella Quintera wrecked by the side of the road. Such reckless driving, especially in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, seemed ominous. The identity of her rescuer confirmed Bella’s fears. Years before, Daniel Champlain had been her lover, but the relationship was one she strove to forget. The NSA agent’s rugged good looks still haunted her—as did his betrayal. BUT NOT HER LIFE She’d watched him destroy her father; now Daniel demanded Bella listen. She was in danger. He wanted to know about her new creation, about its implications for national security. What she’d designed was worth killing for; but was a master criminal truly after her—or was Daniel again pursuing his ambition, thoughtlessly flipping her life upside down? The peril was real, no game like the jigsaw puzzles she made in her spare time. And this puzzle had missing pieces: the ones that showed whom she could trust.

Kathleen Nance’s cover for JIGSAW is a work of art—it just should be on a different book! Leisure Books must have needed to fill their Gothic/Paranormal quota for the month and poor Kathleen’s magnificent story of Artificial Intelligence FRAN was roped into topping it up. The back blurb barely scrapes the surface of the true story within it.

It’s a hot reunited lover’s story, so if you love that hook you’ll be in for a treat. The real character in the suspense plot is the Artificial Intelligence computer the heroine has named FRAN—the woman’s name FRAN, it doesn’t stand for an acrostic. This computer is capable of teaching itself subjects such as Shakespeare, nuclear physics, and how the daily news impacts the history of the world. The heroine, Bella Quintera, plans to take her to the Turing Competition in London and regain her reputation that the hero stripped from her four years ago. FRAN is the best of the best, and Bella knows that she’s actually managed to create real Artificial Intelligence that can speak, think, recognize other people as friendly or unfriendly, and feel some kinds of emotion.

The romance in this story is so firmly embedded that you can’t separate it from the suspense of which party is going to end up with FRAN. Daniel, the NSA agent sent to bring FRAN in, and who betrayed Bella four years ago, is still in love with her, and like all heroes his fatal flaw is that he’s not willing to let her go. We wouldn’t cheer for him if he could, would we? And Bella is feisty but vulnerable, nurturing in her relationship with FRAN, wanting what’s best for FRAN but wanting her career and reputation back as well.

The screaming, freezing, blistering, aching, roaring winter that charges through the book plays a nice counter-point to the clinical and yet innocent mind of FRAN. Nance has done a great job of playing them against each other as secondary characters to the human characters in the book. She always uses the winter weather for emotional impact, and FRAN as that of a kidnapped child to be cared for and protected.

Her setting is Gothic, but the characters are not. Nor is the actual situation. The hero and heroine playing virtual reality fantasy games as sexual foreplay are certainly not Gothic, although it’s a delightful way to introduce computers and artificial intelligence technology to the reader. So, if you’re judging the book by it’s cover you’re going to be disappointed, but then delightfully pleased by the fantastic romantic suspense inside. Unless you are looking for a brooding hero with a pale, blonde, virgin locked in the tower.

Laurie Wood