Special Agent Tara Rushing arrives at a grisly murder scene and quickly discovers she’s got a serial killer on her hands. The killer is meticulous, making sure to wipe up even the smallest traces of evidence…but the Delphi Center experts are on the case.

The local sheriff has a suspect all picked out—ex-Marine and current security expert Liam Wolfe. Despite all her digging, Tara knows very little about Liam when she shows up at his sprawling Texas compound, which serves as headquarters for Wolfe Securities, and she’s surprised by her intense physical reaction to him.

As she and Liam grow closer, Tara finds herself depending on his skills and expertise to help her track a killer. But when another body turns up, Tara must decide if she can trust the man who’s quickly stealing her heart.

Jen’s review of Shadow Fall (Tracers #9) by Laura Griffin.

FBI Agent Tara Rushing is called in when a grisly murder is discovered, but her job isn’t easy. Local law enforcement are blocking her path, and potential suspect and world-renowned security expert Liam Wolfe is not making things any easier. When it becomes clear that this isn’t an isolated incident but a serial killer, the investigation gets more complicated, and more dangerous. Tara’s team, together with help from Liam and his employees, have to try to find the killer before they strike again.

I had some issues with the last Tracers book in the way the hero took away from the heroine’s agency and authority. Thankfully, this book didn’t suffer from the same problems! Tara is a tough, determined lady. She’s on the FBI’s SWAT team and can more than hold her own in any kind of fight. Even better, she’s smart and clever, both in her investigating and in her interpersonal skills. She gets tapped to head up the investigation team despite being less experienced than some others, and she absolutely makes the most of it. While Liam is incredibly clever in his own right and does get things past her sometimes, she can keep up with him, and I liked that. I also liked seeing her softer side. She truly cares about the victims and their families, and while she puts on a tough front to earn respect, she has a vulnerable side underneath. I enjoyed learning about her.

I didn’t make the connection until it was spelled out, but Liam is the brother of Mark Wolfe, the hero from book 5. I liked Mark, but I really liked Liam. My favorite thing? He thinks Tara’s sexy because she’s tough. When he finds out she’s in SWAT and that she’s very smart, he gets a major case of attraction, and he decides then and there he’s going to pursue her. Even greater, though, is that he wants to get to know her, not just get in her pants. Gotta love a hero who goes after what he wants! Like Derek in the last book, Liam is not particularly good at rule following, but unlike Derek, Liam respects Tara’s role in the investigation and, for the most part, doesn’t try to get in the way of what she has to do. At one point, Tara has to trample on their burgeoning trust a little (in a completely legal, justified way) during her investigation. I love that she does what she knows she needs to do, even though she’s aware Liam won’t be happy. I also love that while Liam’s upset, he doesn’t stay butthurt eternally like so many heroes would. He ends up accepting that Tara’s just doing her job. Don’t get me wrong; Liam is still a bossy alpha who does try to control things and doesn’t like authority, but he doesn’t steamroll and he doesn’t denigrate what Tara has to do. Instead, he does what he does to protect the people he cares about, including Tara.

The suspense plot is also well done. Griffin doesn’t shy away from violence against women, which isn’t my favorite, but her stories are exciting and gripping. We get to spend some time with the Delphi Center characters too, my favorite part of the whole series. I love hearing about the science behind the investigations. There are some good twists and turns in the story, and even though it’s not impossible to figure out, it still kept me tense and desperate to keep reading!

We get to see a lot of Tara’s emotional turmoil, but I wish Liam would have gotten to see more of it, too. Tara keeps a lot of her feelings bottled inside. She clearly has some pretty big trauma, but there’s not much open discussion of it. (Similarly, Liam doesn’t give Tara a lot of personal revelations, though that feels less noteworthy because the book more heavily focuses on Tara.) Of course, the timeline of the story is quick and they’re racing against time, so I suppose too many emotional discussions wouldn’t be logical, but I still wanted a little more of something. The short timeline also makes the ending a bit too quick for my liking. I felt like Tara and Liam were off to a spectacular HFN that would later turn into HEA, but only with some more getting-to-know you time.

This book is one of my favorites in the series, though, and well worth reading!

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

This book is available from Pocket Books. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.