
Amanda Stevens, author of the Graveyard Queen series of Southern gothic fantasies (starting with The Restorer) about a professional grave restorer with necromantic powers, has more recently turned to writing Harlequin romantic thrillers that are pretty good for the genre. Every so often some of the genre conventions stick out, but on the way the plots draw you along, the characters are well drawn and believable, and the atmosphere and settings create a suspenseful background for the story. In this one, a former FBI profiler, now a criminology professor back in her hometown, is kidnapped and buried alive... and both she and her high school sweetheart, the deputy police chief, race against time to figure out whodunnit. Was it somehow orchestrated by the now-incarcerated serial killer she spent 7 years profiling? Was it a rival criminology professor (!)? A romantic rival? Could it be connected to her husband's death in a car crash? Read and find out!