Judith’s review of Strong, Sleek and Sinful by Lorie O’Clare.
Special Agent Kylie Donovan knows the evil that men do. After her sister’s murder went unsolved, she decided to work undercover for the FBI. Now, posing as a college student, she hopes to track down an Internet predator who is murdering teenage girls. Using herself as bait, Kylie is sure she can lure the killer out of the shadows…until her fascination with a drop-dead gorgeous cop threatens to blow her whole case.With a rock hard body and seductive smile, Lieutenant Perry Flynn is a hard man to ignore. He makes it very clear that Kylie’s fierce attraction is mutual. But Kylie can’t afford to let Perry cloud her judgment, especially when she begins to suspect that his dark obsession with the case runs deeper than it should. Then, when disturbing new evidence points to a cop, Kylie wonders if her sinful thoughts about Perry have thrust her into the strong, sleek arms of a killer…
The world of internet child pornography stands ass a blight on the collective human conscience. There are actually people who believe that loving children sexually is the highest expression of love. And if that doesn’t sicken you, the be aware that there are still thousands of children who go missing every year to be sold as “slave” to people who are turned on by child bodies and who discard these individuals as soon as they are too old to excite them any longer. Hundreds, if not thousands of teens are found abused and dead after being lured by internet predators. It is just this scenario upon which this edgy and insightful novel is based.
This assignment in the Kansas City, MO area is not Kylie’s first. She has a long and spotless record as an undercover FBI agent who lures teen sexual predators out into the open and puts them out of business. Posing as a post-graduate student doing research for a master’s thesis, Kylie makes friends with teens in the Mission Hills area in the hopes of preventing young women from being lured to their death as well as possibly identifying and making contact with the person or persons who are abducting and murdering teens. Several of those teen interview contacts are nieces of a local police lieutenent, a man who is drop-dead gorgeous, brittle, hard-nosed, and terribly attracted to Kylie. But somehow his police instincts lead him to believe that Kylie is lying to him about herself and what she is doing. She is either trolling for victims (which he really doesn’t believe) or she is playing amateur detective (which he won’t allow for her safety’s sake).
There isn’t a lot of trust going around. The local police are under scrutiny as it is found that the computer where the messages from the predator belong to the city; Lieu. Flynn doesn’t trust Kylie because he thinks she is lying; the police don’t trust the FBI and vice versa; and Kylie doesn’t trust Flynn as she is aware that the predator could easily be a cop. Kylie does begin a friendship with Flynn’s nieces–a friendship that continues to grow throughout the story. It is that very friendship which may ultimately save the life of one of those girls.
Flynn and Kylie give in to their attraction but underneath the hot sex and the draw toward one another is the fear that Flynn is somehow mixed up in the killings (her fear), or that Kylie knows stuff about the crimes that she is not sharing and is thus hampering a police investigation (his fear). Both Kylie and Flynn fight against their attraction because somehow they both perceive that Kylie isn’t going to remain in this area and both are hoping that their relationship is just hot sex and nothing more. Kylie is hurt when she overhears Flynn rejecting the idea that they have a relationship, a rejection that causes her to pull back as she more judiciously guards her heart.
This is a love story between two unlikely people who love the excitement and are not really wanting any kind of permanent relationship with someone. It is also a romance that is set in the middle of suspense, serial killing, teen abduction, and messy nature of law enforcement. There’s plenty of action throughout the story even while Kylie is building her friendships and Flynn is struggling with his feelings. The reader is given clue after clue but determining the identity of the killer is not easy and the ending of the suspense portion of the story is certainly surprising. But Kylie and Flynn’s difficulties do not end there. There is still the matter of their respective jobs as well as the question of whether Kylie will stay in the Mission Hills area. There is no easy road for these two on their road to wherever this relationship is going to take them.
Ms O’Clare has an impressive portfolio of published work and has proven that she knows how to tell a really good story, She has filled this novel with hot loving, friendship and family, the excitement of good police work and the wounding that is inevitable when good people’s lives are shattered by the greed and perversion of sexual predators. The situation is certainly contemporary but it is not difficult to feel as if this could be happening in the reader’s own experience. None of us is immune to the dangers that lurk on the internet. (Having young granddaughters makes me more aware of that now than ever.) Yet it is the hope of criminal activity cut short, of love that can bring even unlikely people together, of the bonds of family love that can prevent teens from exposing themselves to the dangers a predator represents, and the good that comes when individuals seek the best for themselves and those they love.
If readers enjoy a well-written novel filled with sexy, hard-fighting law enforcement types, really like the hot loving that erupts when two passionate people find each other, and are delighted with a novel that brings all this together, you will like this book. It was released earlier this year and is another fine work from the pen of an accomplished author. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to read and review it, and hope that you will read it for yourselves. I give it a rating of 4.25 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.
This book is available from St. Martin’s Press. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
Leave a Reply