Kill and Tell: A Novel

Karen Whitlaw's mother just died and she gets a package from her estranged father, who left them when she was small. She packs it away and forgets about it. Sometime later, her father is murdered in New Orleans. She flies down to identify the body and begins a relationship with Detective Marc Chastain. Soon after returning home, her mother's house burns to the ground and someone breaks into her apartment trying to kill her. Someone is after the contents of the package her father sent, but who?
The plot of this book is excellent. Suspenseful, intricate, and realistic, it's easily the best thing about the book. Karen and Marc have some halfway believable chemistry, as well. The real flaw in the writing is Howard's love scenes. Her show more terminology is cringeworthy. Fortunately, there is no important information or dialogue during them, so go ahead and skip them. Focus on the mystery, you'll be all right. show less

Karen Whitlaw and her estranged father Dex, an ex-Viet Nam sniper determined to blackmail someone from his past. Karen, grieving the recent loss of her mother, travels to New Orleans at the behest of Detective Marc Chastain when informed of her father's death. What follows is Karen's reckoning with her ambiguous feelings about a father who deserted her as a child, as well as her journey into sensuality with Marc. Meanwhile, sinister forces from her father's past seek to destroy Karen and the book her father held over someone's head.

"Kill and Tell" was a very good mixture of action and romance. It kept you guessing how all the players were tied together.

I've read 3 or 4 of Howard's books and each time I always leave the story with a slightly bad taste in my mouth. I love her writing style, her heroines, and her adventure/suspense plots and those are the three things that keep me coming back to her books. But I almost always hate her heroes. I either want to bash them over the head for their "me Tarzan, you Jane" approach to handling things or I just find them completely unattractive and spend most of the book trying to figure out what's so freakin appealing about them. With that in mind I have to say that Marc is above and beyond the creepiest and most unattractive of the heroes I've read in one of Howard's book yet. The first half of the book is a balance between Marc calmly show more manipulating a grieving Karen into having hot monkey sex with him and scenes of the bad guys plotting evilly.

And my like of Marc didn't improve in the second half of the book. I was still slightly peeved that the guy was so confident in his mad seduction skillz that he put on a condom while he was getting drinks and sandwiches prepared for his dinner with Karen (who had just come from her father's funeral and he had just met one or two days ago). As the book progressed farther along I kept cringing at the things Marc did and I finally just gave up on him when he proclaimed (after having unprotected sex with Karen who now not only lost her father and mother within the same year and just came back from being almost killed twice) that she had no choice to marry him if she was pregnant because he refused to have an illegitimate child. What is this 20th century England?

After that I didn't really care what happened to the two main characters. Karen had turned from a strong independent woman to a big walk all over me marshmallow when around Marc and Marc was a grunting, manipulative, douche bag.

As for the suspense plot, if I ignore the two main characters which are what killed the book for me, I enjoyed it. It was an interesting premise and I adore the setting. My only complaint about the plot was that I thought the notebook should've played a bigger part in the whole deal than it did. The notebook was mentioned and was in the forefront of my mind the whole time but I thought it should've been in one of the main characters hands earlier than the last 30 pages of the book. show less

Kill and Tell
3.5 Stars

After receiving a package from her estranged father, Karen Whitlaw doesn't even give it a second glance. But when Dexter Whitlaw is murdered in New Orleans and Karen is plagued by a series of mysterious "accidents", she soon realizes that someone is desperate to get their hands on the package. With help from homicide detective, Marc Chastain, Karen must learn her father's secrets before she falls victim to a determined killer.

The suspense plot is good, but the romance falls flat mainly due to the judgmental hero.

Karen and Marc's relationship gets off on the wrong foot when he makes some rather ugly assumptions about her. Then, all of a sudden, he has an epiphany and realizes he has made a mistake, and she is the show more perfect woman to take as his next conquest. Please save me from this man's gigantic ego!

Unfortunately, Karen falls very easily for his possessive charm and protectiveness, and what little tension there is between them at the outset fizzles very quickly once they hop into bed. As is always the case with Linda Howard, the sex scenes are sizzling even if the emotional connection is lacking.

The mystery is much better with some intense and exciting moments even though the villain is revealed early on. There is some bumbling around on the part of the hired goons that defies common sense, but Karen is a strong heroine and there is, thankfully, no damsel in distress routine.

In sum, not one of Howard's better books but it is a quick and entertaining read nonetheless. show less

This was a great story - the mystery and suspense were just gripping enough without being too horrifying, the characters were believable and sympathetic, and the romance - WOW! I LOVED the "dancing on the balcony" scene - might have my husband read that one!

Karen Whitlaw just wants to mourn her mother and get on with her life. She never expected her estranged father to show up dead and complicate everything.

New Orleans homicide detective Mike Chastain has no patience with people who abandon their elderly relatives to street life, no matter how pretty they might happen to be. But something about this case isn't adding up.

Formulaic, sure, and the villain's perfectly clear from the very beginning, but still one of Howard's better efforts.

First book I've read by the author, but I'll look for more now.
Karen's estranged father is killed in New Orleans. But something tells the detective, Marc, that this isn't a homeless bum story. Karen has some papers she doesn't know she has and there's some unsavory characters after her. Most of the story is set in New Orleans, but part is set in Columbus, Ohio which I will use for the states reading challenge.