White Hot Author:Sandra Brown When she hears that her younger brother Danny has committed suicide, Sayre Lynch relents from her vow never to return to Destiny, the small Louisiana town in which she grew up. She plans to leave immediately after the funeral, but instead soon finds herself drawn into the web cast by Huff Hoyle, her controlling and tyrannical father, the man who... more » owns the town's sole industry, an iron foundry, and in effect runs the lives of everyone who lives there.
As she feared, Sayre learns that nothing has changed. Her father and older brother, Chris, are as devious as ever, and now they have a new partner-in-crime, a canny and disarming lawyer named Beck Merchant, who appears to be their equal in corruption.
Soon, Sayre is thrown in closer contact with Beck and becomes convinced that something more sinister is at play than her father's usual need to dominate people and events. As she sets out to learn just what did happen to Danny, she comes to realize that there are many secrets in Destiny -- secrets that hide decades of pain and anger, and that threaten at any moment to erupt and destroy not only her father and brother, but perhaps Sayre herself.
Underneath the rigid control that the Hoyles exert over the town, trouble is brewing. Old hatreds foster plans for revenge, past crimes resurface, and a maverick deputy sheriff determines that Danny Hoyle's death was not suicide, but murder.
As tensions mount, threatening to ignite a powder keg of long-held hostility, Sayre finds herself inextricably drawn into a struggle with striking laborers, her unscrupulous father, and her own emotions over the love/hate relationship that is growing with Beck, a man apparently with his own agenda, and mysteries of his own.
As she has shown in the dozens of bestselling novels in which she has combined hard-edged suspense with intense emotion, Sandra Brown is a master storyteller, and in her new novel she is at her very best.« less
Sandra Brown's books keep getting better and this story was no exception. I did read this about a year ago and can't totally remember the whole story, but I do remember that I couldn't put it down. I keep the great ones to reread and this is one I still have.
This is the first time I read her work. It was a real good bk and I will read more bks from S. Brown. The writing was believeable, and suspensfull. I was up till 3am to see the ending!
Even though she swore she would never return to Destiny, Sayre Lynch goes home to attend her brother's funeral. But she soon learns that his suicide may actually have been murder. She also finds that her father still runs the town's foundry with an iron fist. Sayre is horrified by the conditions at the foundry and it's history of accidents and fatalities. She wants to help bring change to the business, but her family's attorney, Beck Merchant, is standing in her way.
It took me almost a week to get through this book. It was billed as romantic suspense, but I found it neither romantic nor suspenseful. The saving grace of the book was the plot twist near the end. My rating: 3 Stars.
I'm not a romance fan, and bought this book thinking it was a mystery/thriller. Even so, I enjoyed it. It's well written and suspenseful. The plot twisted and turned until the very end. It kept me hooked.