Linda Howard

The best thing about romantic suspense is by the end of the book, the mystery is solved and the romance is resolved. Two dominos, set very close together, toppling almost at the same time. Click, clack. Very satisfying.
Add in car chases and shoot-outs, breaking and entering, motorcycles – well, hand me a crumpet and hold my calls. This is my cup of tea.
No one writes love-on-the-run Romantic Suspense better than Linda Howard. But what makes me anticipate her books is that she continually show more reworks the premise of the genre, resisting writing the same book twice. I think this is a writer who has never met a “What if” she could ignore. In the case of Shadow Woman, she takes a theme she’s explored before – the delayed meeting between hero and heroine from Son of the Morning - and takes it one tantalizing step farther – What if there is less?
In Shadow Woman romantic suspense is pared down to the bone, to the essence of mystery. One morning Lissette looks in her bathroom mirror and doesn't recognize herself. The face she sees is not the one she is expecting to see. Thus begins the smallest mystery - who am I? Just a question. No gruesome murder, no explosion or gunfire, no swarming police. There is only a woman trying to figure out why she doesn't recognize her own face. Which leads to the ancillary questions, What should she do about it? And why are people following her - or are they? Is she crazy as well as what, amnesiac?
Woven around this woman's quest for answers is a shadowy governmental cover-up. But a cover-up of what? Howard reveals the backstory with the most gossamer of strokes: Xavier, hero material - tall, lean, muscled, threatening without doing much more than breathing. Felice - department head, the power behind the throne type (who probably does think too much). Al Forge - wonderful name - the man who make Felice's orders come true, caught between Felice and Xavier, yet somehow his own man. Slowly, carefully - like lace- the cover-up itself is revealed. But still the mystery remains – what is being covered-up? What happened in the past that leads up to Lissette unable to recognize her own face? The suspense is relentless, the mystery impenetrable.
The romance has also been pared to the thinnest possible thing, powerful in its slightness. You know books where on page 1 She sees Him (or He sees Her) and this is followed by 398 pages of will he, won't he? Do I? Don’t I? I like him. I want him. I want his chest, his arms, his hands, his baby. Pant, pant, touch, touch, clench, stroke, squeeze and fly? Well, Shadow Woman isn't anything like that.
Howard takes the notion that love in all its permutations is mostly mental, and takes it to an exquisite extreme. Lisette and Xavier meet briefly on page 68 in what I had thought was the least romantic place in the planet - Walgreens. They meet over a discussion about shampoo:

“But look at this.” He turned the bottle so she could see it. “ ‘Volumizing and clarifying.’ What is it, and do I need it? Will it make my hair stand straight out, and I’ll understand the universe better?”
She looked up…. “I don’t think you need any volumizing.” Pointing down the aisle, she said,”Besides, this is a woman’s shampoo. You need that manly man stuff down there.”
He looked where she was pointing. “What’s the difference?”
“Packaging.”
His gaze returned to her and his lips quirked again. “So I’ll still understand the universe better? “
Her heart stated beating a little harder, a little faster. “No, but you’ll feel more manly while you’re not understanding.”

Xavier and Lizzy don't meet again until more than half way through the book. Now, she kind of knows him, half-remembers him, definitely dreams him, but doesn't see him for pages. Where’s the romance in that? The romance is in her head, in her mind, in her dreams. It’s in his head, his memories, his hopes and plans. The tension of half-knowing, remembering, yearning is so inescapably intense that when the romance comes to life - into real life – passion explodes like a banked fire that suddenly gets air:

“Time spun away again. The world spun away. Memory and reality collided; it was the way it had been before, the heat and stretching and almost-pain. There was no foreplay, no trying to arouse her, but he’d always had her number and could make her come even when she was trying her damnedest not to, just to spite him. She came easy for him, in both sense of the word. He kissed her, and she was turned on. He touched her, and she was ready for him.”

Linda Howard is one of my favorite authors because of books like Shadow Woman: a unique, powerful romance inextricably mixed with a dazzling mystery. Brava! show less

This is a DNF- Did Not Finish- for me.

At first, Mr. Perfect was funny and charming. Ok, the scenes between the four women was a little too Sex In the City for me, but I tolerated it. If you are going to describe your characters as laughing their asses off at their own amusing banter, then the banter should actually be amusing, amirite?

However, I loved, loved, loved the interplay between hero and heroine. I mean, sexy, funny, no-backing down verbal sparring that just ups the sexual tension to show more a million? Sign me up for that book! But will-they-won't-they is hard to sustain when they finally do.

And when these two do, there is a terrible misconception about the pill. Part of the reason Jaine says no to Sam is because she is not on birth control. So, she goes on the pill. For ONE day. And then they're all hot & heavy and Sam says, "but will we be safe?" and Jaine is all, "oh yeah, I'm on the pill."

Actually, no. You are NOT infertile taking the pill for one day. That's not safe, open, honest sex, and that means Jaime is not a smart woman. My interest in the book diminished sharply after this moment.

Combining this with the fact that I kinda saw through the serial killer from the start... I put the book down and never returned.

This is one of the books that now contributes to my Stop Serial Killer POV in Romancelandia campaign. It's just not good. Instead of being scary, it's bad pop-psychology: trite, stereotypical, and boorrring. show less

This high mark is partly for all the incredible entertainment Linda Howard has given me.

Sure the heroine, Cathryn, was annoying! There's a certain genre of romance novel where the hero or heroine has no idea when they are loved, because the other person hasn't SAID it. What about those people whose love language is acts of service, ACTS of anything! Rule is so obviously madly in love with Cathryn ... though it has a touch of Heathcliff and that other Cathryn.

The style is definitely dated but I was mostly okay with the 80's vibe (I'm quite fond of Ye Olde Skool). My main problem was with the ending. Manly McStuddmuffin kept withholding information and Retiring Violetinksy kept rolling over for him. McStudmuffin came from a titled English family, which is not so big a deal, but he didn't disclose this to Violetinsky until he was literally introducing her to Lady Mummy McStudmuffin one week before their wedding. Since his past misdeeds included show more lying about himself and withholding his true interests, it seemed like Violetinksy should have been seriously concerned that he hadn't mended his ways. But nooooo, she's upset because it means she's even less worthy of him than she previously thought (like what the actual fuck).

I'm not really having the best of luck with Linda Howard, most of what I've read of hers has been objectively middle-of-the-road, but I will admit that her books are kind of magically delicious. I'll be staring at my (almost overwhelmingly) long TBR list and then downloading whatever Howard book happens to be available from the library instead. It's a little bananas. show less