Holly Barker, Police Chief of Orchid Beach, Florida is on the trail of a fugitive. She is chasing Trini Rodriguez and has a mass murder warrant for him. The problem is that the FBI has placed him in the Witness Protection Program because he is helping them with an investigation into a terrorist cell with links to the Middle East. Trini is a member of the Mafia and Holly believes that he is hiding out in New York City.
Stone, a high caliber and very expensive New York lawyer, has an idea or two and takes her to Little Italy for lunch. Within minutes of arrival at a restaurant in Little Italy, Holly spots Trini walking by, leaps from her table gun in hand, and gives chase down the crowded sidewalk. She loses him almost as quickly and vows once again to get her man, one-way or the other. That becomes the primary theme of the novel. Holly, with Stone and his longtime ally, Dino who is still on the NYPD and occasionally others, pursue Trini across the country and back to New York, nearly having him before losing him again and again thanks to the FBI and/or the Mafia.
Stone Barrington gets the beautiful lady, routinely exhausts himself in the bedroom or elsewhere in the process, and runs around New York driving expensive cars and eating fine foods. Thanks to his lawyer connections, he always outsmarts everyone and unlike Bond, there are no fussy superiors to deal with.
This report prepared by Kevin R. Tipple
In this book Woods takes two of his most successful characters and puts them together. Holly Barker, chief of the Orchid Beach, Fla., police department, of the “Orchid Series” is still hunting Trini. He apparently didn't die when she stabbed him in “Blood Orchid” and is in fact in the witness protection program, and is in New York. Holly hops a plane with Daisy (everyone should have a dog like Daisy) and tracks him to New York. She immediately calls Stone Barrington, as they met in “Orchid Blues” and he invites her to stay with him. This leads to Stone immediately being pulled into the hunt for Trini.
This report prepared by Tanya
Putnam, April 2004, 25.95, 384 pp.
ISBN 0399151516
When Holly Barker, Chief of the Orchid Beach Police in Florida travels to New York to apprehend a fugitive, she contacts Stone Barrington who invites her to stay at his home. They met when Stone witnessed a bank robbery in which Holly's fiancé was killed. Trini Rodriguez, who is part of the Mafia, is wanted in the murder of over a dozen people after he bombed a church. Holly couldn't keep him behind bars because Trini was a very important informant who the FBI put in the Witness Protection Program.
Holly hopes to find him in New York City and arrest him on a fugitive warrant but the FBI wants her to hold off on serving it until Trini's infiltrates an Arab terrorist cell so the government can arrest them on information the thugs delivers. After the cell is broken up the FBI spirit Trini away with Stone and Holly trailing them all over the country to hand down the warrant. While perusing Trini and company, Holly and Stone begin a hot and steamy affair that gets her mind off of her obsessive need to find her criminal.
In RECKLESS ABANDON, the FBI comes across as bumbling idiots who can't shake a tail or keep their informant hidden. The fact that they are willing to protect him after he killed over a dozen innocents will enrage readers as much as it does Holly.
Harriet Klausner
This report prepared by Harriet Klausner
