Hot Pursuit

Hot Pursuit
4 Stars

Alyssa Locke, along with her husband, Sam Starret, and their son, Ash, travel to NY to provide self-defense training to a local assemblywoman. But the relatively easy assignment soon takes on a sinister edge when a horrific message arrives, and a mutilated body is found. With reinforcements from a team of moonlighting Navy SEALS, Sam and Alyssa find themselves tracking an old nemesis whose real target is very close to home.

Serial killer plots are catnip for me, but this one is rather weak. To begin with, Brockman uses the prologue to present Alyssa as the real target, and the reader spends much of the book waiting for the attack to come. While this technique is useful for ratcheting up the tension, it is also show more problematic as the reader is constantly on alert. Books require lulls in the tension otherwise, they soon become exhausting.

There is also very little actual investigation - neither Sam nor Alyssa is a cop and Brockmann's forte is military romance, not police procedurals. In fact, the other serial killer focused book, Into the Storm, is also lacking in this area. Moreover, it is easy to guess the villain based on the scenes from their POV, and the red-herrings are futile. Despite these issues, the eventual climax and resolution are exciting and satisfying.

In terms of the romantic elements, Alyssa and Sam's relationship goes from strength to strength with each installment. Their obvious love and mutual respect for one another are clearly evident in their interactions, and the inclusion of the adorable Ash is an added bonus.

The other focus is on the romance between Navy SEAL Dan Gillman and Jennilyn LeMay, the assemblywoman's chief of staff. To be honest, Dan has never been a favorite and his behavior in previous books, as well as in this one, leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, it soon becomes clear that he has met his match in the intelligent, thoughtful and caring Jenn. Time will tell if he ultimately matures enough to deserve her.

All in all, a solid addition to the series. show less

While I do love the Troubleshooters series, the bad guy (a serial killer obsessed with Alyssa Locke, a security consultant for Troubleshooters) is campy and ridiculous.

However, I did love that Izzy was in the story - still pining over Eden, his estranged young wife - and the scenes between Dan Gillman and Jenny were VERY sexy. Not sexy was the repeated mentions of her being 'thick," "solid," and "chunky," and very plain. While yes, I hate those stories where every woman is beautiful and the men are not handsome but rugged and manly, but this was headed into somewhat insulting territory. Dan does get scolded a *bit*, but it's still annoying.

Kind of wish I'd skipped this one...

Hot Pursuit
Troubleshooters series #15

Dan Gillman & Jennilyn "Jenn" LeMay; Sam & Alyssa Starrett are main characters in this one as well

Alyssa & Sam Starrett bring their Troubleshooters team to NYC to bump up security procedures for a new assemblywoman, Maria Bonavita, who has been receiving some disturbing hate mail, etc. While they are in town, dead bodies (and body parts) start showing up in the area and it eventually becomes clear that the serial killer whom Alyssa has been trying to track down for years is involved. "The Dentist" was introduced as a heinous and sadistic killer in a short story about Sam & Alyssa featured at the end of a previous book in this series. This part of the story provides a lot of (made for TV cop show) show more drama and gives Sam and Alyssa another chance to show us how awesome they are.

The new romance, however, was definitely "meh". Part of the team, Dan Gillman, meets Miss Bonavita's good friend and chief of staff, Jennilyn LeMay, but initially writes her off because she is plain, overweight, etc. This fact is mentioned a lot, to the point of excess. I'm thinking that may have been done to have us get inside Dan's oversized superficial head. In another Brockmann book (not sure if it's in the same series but the characters are connected in some way), there was a similar match-up between an uber-handsome SEAL and a woman a little bit older who was self conscious about carrying a little extra weight. That one was handled so differently because the male character saw her as beautiful right away and helped her feel confident even if she wasn't as thin as she'd like to be.

Dan is a different story. He doesn't become interested in her until he is assigned the job of protecting her in her apartment. He finds himself alone with her and she is convenient. He's a complete manipulative jerk and I finally see why he was constantly called derogatory names and looked down on by some of his teammates in prior books. This relationship was complete nonsense. I have no idea why Jenn allowed herself to become involved with him, especially after she overhears him being disrespectful to her while talking to a friend. He is a complete asshat. He does improve a bit in the next book, but his behavior is really atrocious in this one. show less

Another good read from SB. I actually liked it better the second time around. I guess because I knew what was going to happen, I wasn't so disappointed in some of the things that kind of torqued me the first time around. It was great to see more of Izzy, my favorite character. I have been looking forward for Dan Gilman's story for a while. It started here and I was glad that he wasn't turned into an instant good guy. I like when the stories take place over several books and you can see them change and grow. So this was really no one's love story. It did have a beginning middle and end in the story of the serial killer. So I liked it but it was more along the lines of checking in on the guys lives and loves rather than any sort of a HEA.

Sam and Alyssa, along with baby Ashton and the Troubleshooters team, travel to New York City to teach a Congresswoman and her interns self-protection methods. Soon it becomes apparent that a serial killer has targeted the office and their `easy assignment` becomes a fight for their lives.

Fifteenth in the Troubleshooters, Inc. series. Brockmann always tells a current story and then adds a backstory from previous books. This time the story is about Dan Gillman whose sister Eden married Izzy in the previous book. Brockmann also brings back `The Dentist,` an uncaught killer from Into the Storm. These books are hot, sexy, and fast reads. Highly recommend the series.

Alyssa Lock, former Naval officer and former FBI agent is a team leader for one of the nations top personal security companies, Troubleshooters, Inc.
They are asked to provide a course in publis safety to the newly elected New York congresswoman, Maria Bonavita.
The team travels to New York and sets up security around Maria. At the same time we are privy to the thoughts of a killer known only as The Dentist. He was about to turn himself in to Alyssa and had the body of his last victim in the trunk of his car. He saw Alyssa enter a Starbucks and followed her in to surrender to her. When he entered, she was talking to someone else, one of the SEALS. The Dentist lost his moment and decides this is a sign to go on killing. He makes the next show more target, Alyssa.

Since this is the fifteenth installment of Troubleshooters, the author assumes that the reader is familiar with the characters. Unfortunately, this was my first exposure to the group. Therefore there wasn't any character development and the characters were stereotypical and one dementional.
In addition, I felt that the antogonist's near invincibility until the end of the story was a reach. With the navy SEALS looking for him and the New York police department, The Dentist went about his business of attempting to murder Alyssa as if he didn't have anything to worry about. show less

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy the Troubleshooters series. This one has Sam & Alyssa, introduces Jenn to Dan (Gillman), and some Robin & Jules, plus there's a suspense plot about the serial killer known as the Dentist - first introduced in some of the free shorts Brockmann wrote for fans of Sam & Alyssa.I really enjoyed it - the only thing which bothered me was that I really started to notice the author's habit of saying "And, yeah, okay" variations on those 3 words - after so many books, it's getting a little old for me. But really, if that's the only thing I can think of, that's saying to me that this is a pretty great book.