DECEPTION

Author: Selena Montgomery ISBN: 9780061376054 4/2009 SUSPENSE Publisher: AVON

Always on the run . . . Playing the odds has always been Fin Borders' forte. She knows when to get out to keep from losing everything. But an innocent woman has been accused of murder, and to help, Fin will have to go back to the small southern town of her birth. It's a place she's been running from her entire life, a place of violence, where she got by with nothing more than her wits. Returning to Hallden, Georgia, means facing the ghosts of a brutal crime that Fin will never forget—and risking her own life. But Fin isn't the only one in Hallden hunting for a killer. FBI Special Agent Caleb Matthews is deep undercover, hiding his true identity and his own desperate history. Working alone is far too dangerous, so he and Fin must learn to trust each other. But as they grow closer, they are unprepared for the passion that takes hold . . . and the shocking deception that could destroy everything they hold dear.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Selena Montgomery sets her romantic suspense novel DECEPTION (sequel to RECKLESS) in a small Georgia town several hours south of Atlanta, where the city police chief is on the run from murder charges, and three women who grew up at the Faraday Center for Children and ran from a warehouse fire as teens, have come home to save Mrs. Faraday and the Center. Kell Jameson returns after all those years as a high-power attorney; Julia is an emergency room doctor in Boston; and Fin Borders is a professional gambler who learned her trade in that burned-out warehouse when it was an illegal nightspot in a dry county. Kell has gotten Mrs. Faraday off a murder charge, and it looks like that was just a ruse to wrest control of her land from her and the Metanoia Foundation by a criminal enterprise that has been hiding in plain sight for several decades. When part of the group known as Stark tries to kill the women shortly after Julia and Fin arrive at the airport, they realize that evil runs deeper than Kell and her new boyfriend, Sheriff Luke Calder, ever thought. Will he and ADA Caleb Matthews be able to save the women, while rounding up the gang posing as upstanding citizens?

Montgomery is a master of suspense. Even though Kell is a hard as nails attorney and Julia never flinches from what needs to be done, Fin is the one to watch. She has a poker face to end all poker faces. And she reads people faster than anybody. She even figures out that the hot ADA is really FBI and has been undercover in this job for two years. The steam between Fin and Caleb nearly boils over and neither seems to be able to control themselves, even in the face of imminent danger. Between the adrenaline pumping through my veins because of the tense investigation, and the pulse-pounding romance between the gambler who has never risked her heart and the Special Agent in charge of chemistry, I may not come down for days. Luke and Caleb have their work cut out for them, since they aren’t sure who they can trust, even in their own offices. Leaks abound, and even the criminals aren’t immune to the dangerous element in their midst.

DECEPTION is an on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense novel with scariness around each corner. The romance is taut, and every kiss threatens to erupt into flames. Although part of the mystery appears to be solved, Montgomery has left some big surprises, and I can’t wait to read the next installment.

Susan Barton