Search - Death Angel

WARNING: Do not start this book unless you have sometime, because it's a book you could sit down and read in one sitting it's so good. This book captured my attention from Chapter 1- It's HARD for a book to do that, but Linda Howard does accomplishes this in her latest book, Death Angel. I couldn't get through the pages quick enough. It's definitely a different story, and one that's a great read. She's given so much detail about Drea, that you feel really connected to her, which, sometimes you never get this close to the heroine. Bewareâ€"in this book, the H/H do not spend a huge amount of time together, and for some that's a problem, but I enjoyed the story so much, I didn't see it as a problem!

I read a few reviews of this book today and was very excited at first because I didn't know that Linda Howard had anything new out! After reading the reviews I was a bit hesitant to buy it (it's in HC). A few of the reviews were not very flattering, but she is on of my all time favorite authors (she is the ONLY book on my keeper shelf right now, no joke! "Mr. Perfect" in hardback!) and even though I had been a bit disappointed with the last few things she'd written I was looking forward to reading this. Luckily I found this book on the shelf at the library and snatched it up. I am GLAD I did. The heroine and hero are two of the most flawed main characters I have ever read about, but Linda Howard makes them work and make you want the HEA for them. You start out with no sympathy for Andie; she got herself into the situation she was in by only thinking of herself, no matter the act she put on and wasn't really surprised when she was treated like a commodity. This being "romantic" suspense of course the hero was a "good guy", just not your typical white knight. As he said in the book, he was what he was and he did what he did, no excuses. Both of them are redeemable and Linda managed to get them to their HEA after all. Wish there had been a little bit more of the hero's background, and I wish the climax had been expanded more, but all in all this was a good book and will go on my fav's list if not my keeper shelf.

Drea Rousseau is sick of being a drug lord's plaything. Sure, it's nice not having to do anything more than watch the home shopping network and look pretty, but the whole playing dumb thing gets old kind of fast. Drea's boyfriend, Rafael Salinas, is a drug dealer, a criminal, and an unrepentant sinner whose method of solving problems runs more toward hitmen than mediation. And for a while Drea was content to sit by his side and play the part of the gangster's moll. For two years she played her part flawlessly, biding her time until she could leave him with her jewelry and dignity intact. She knows that Rafael doesn't love her, but she thought he at least cared about her some. But when he trades her body for a hitman's services, she learns that she was wrong. And though the hours she spends in the arms of a cold-blooded killer shouldn't matter to a girl whose boyfriend sells drugs for a living, Drea expected more. And when she doesn't get it, she chooses revenge instead. Siphoning two million dollars from Rafael's accounts, Drea runs for her life. She plans to start all over again in middle America where Rafael can't find her. Only she doesn't expect that he'll send the one man after her who she can't escape--the hitman whose touch she craves even as she runs from it.

I've heard a lot of talk on romance boards over the past few years saying that Linda Howard has lost her touch and that her newer books aren't as good as the old ones. Well, with Death Angel, she's proving her critics wrong. This book was fantastic, and quite possibly my favorite of all her works (though After the Night is still pretty high on my list). The hitman (Simon, whose name I neglected to mention because you don't find it out until later in the story) is a quintessential Howard hero. He's all militaristic stealth and alpha male aggression combined with protective lover and guardian of the innocent. In other words, everything you could want in a hero. At times he seems remote, distant, and unsure of himself, and you don't know if this is the sort of hero you can root for. But when he goes after Drea it isn't with any malice and at the same time he's hunting her he's cheering her on for giving Salinas a taste of his own medicine. And Drea is of the nouveau class of Howard heroines. At one time they were dumb as doornails (think Mary in Mackenzie's Mountain), but now it's like Howard has realized it's okay for a girl to have both beauty and brains. And Drea has them both in spades. This is a girl who plays dumb for two years while she secretly stores account numbers and exchanges real diamonds for fake ones. Drea doesn't delude herself into thinking she has an infinite amount of time with Rafael. In fact, she knows the moment someone prettier and younger catches his eye that she'll be out the door. Which is why she has her contingency plan. In fact, the only reason she takes Rafael to the cleaners is that he proves to her that she means nothing to him, so she decides to take what she thinks she's worth. And I was cheering for her even as I hoped Simon wouldn't catch her.

And all of this is without even mentioning the chemistry between these two characters, which virtually sizzles off the pages. From the moment they touch, the temperature went up in my apartment, and it didn't go down at any point when the two of them were together. I can't remember the last time I've been so emotionally invested and intently engaged by a book--particularly romantic suspense. Linda Howard is the reigning queen of the genre and Death Angel is just another weapon in her arsenal that proves why she got the title.

This was a good book BUT after reading After the Night I wanted more chemisrty like that! The characters are together in the very first chapter and then not again until the the last part of the book.

This was different for Ms. Howard and I really enjoyed the change. The characters are well done and I had some good laughs, whether Ms. Howard intended the humor or not.

Death Angel doesn’t quite fall into the genre of romantic suspense. At times it felt preachy and after the mid-point of the book little happens, but the first half is very good. It hooks the attention right off the bat and has you rooting for Drea even though she is shallow and self-absorbed. It is anticlimactic and the attempt at suspense falls flat because the “bad guy” is a two-dimensional character and we never really see how bad he can be, so there’s no real fear for Drea’s safety. Likewise, Simon is not as fleshed out as Howard’s previous enigmatic anti-heroes like John Medina. I, for one, would have liked to have learned more about him and kept hoping the book would take us into his head more.
All in all, it was a quick, entertaining read, but I know Linda Howard can do better.