REVIEWS

Writer delights readers with High Noon

High Noon by: Nora Roberts Thorndike Press, 2007 ISBN: 0-7862-9391-8

Love can feed the soul and pure love can open up heaven’s door; and that type of love, if never experienced again, can carry a person for a lifetime.

Obsessive love, however, not only destroys the person who is obsessed, but victimizes the object of desire. When that object of desire is killed and her tormentor is saved, the demon that resides in the soul of the obsessed turns deadly, aiming his anger toward the one person who is perceived to have killed the love of his life; the hostage negotiator.

Phoebe MacNamara, Savannah's top hostage negotiator, found her calling when she became a hostage victim at an early age. Her quick thinking kept her family safe and kept the tormentor behind bars. This quick thinking propels her to the top of her field. Not everyone is happy with her record of accomplishment and she soon realizes that being the best is not always good enough because there is always one case, one situation that does not go as well as expected and it is the one case that can bring her whole world crashing down.

She is the glue that keeps her family together emotionally, physically, and is surrounded by her daughter Carly, her mother Essie, a family friend Ava, her brother Carter, her sister-in-law Josie, her Captain Dave -the one who inspired Phoebe to become a hostage negotiator, and then Duncan Swift, the man she gave her heart to and who cherished it as if it were fine porcelain, and Phin, Duncan’s best friend and Ma Bea, Phin’s and Duncan’s mother, not the one who conceived Duncan, but the one who gave him life-something his own mama could never do. However, this comfortable, insulated life Phoebe builds for herself cannot keep her safe, nor can it keep her family safe.

Phoebe is terrorized not by one person but by two; the first one brutally assaults her in the stairwell of the police station where she worked. She does not see her attacker but knows who inflicted the pain and humiliation and the coward is brought to justice. The second one is more sinister and torments Phoebe in the most intimate way; he trespasses onto her property, the one place where she believed was safe from outsiders.

Her foundation is breaking and she soon finds strength outside herself, in Duncan, and leans on him so as to not topple over the physical home she created for her family, or her emotional wall she built around herself.

Nora Roberts weaves a wonderful series of events and infuses action and passion into each situation, leaving you breathless and wanting more. She delights the readers once more with High Noon.