Helpful Score: 3
Drea Rousseau is sick of being a drug lord's plaything. Sure, it's nice not having to do anything more than watch the home shopping network and look pretty, but the whole playing dumb thing gets old kind of fast. Drea's boyfriend, Rafael Salinas, is a drug dealer, a criminal, and an unrepentant sinner whose method of solving problems runs more toward hitmen than mediation. And for a while Drea was content to sit by his side and play the part of the gangster's moll. For two years she played her part flawlessly, biding her time until she could leave him with her jewelry and dignity intact. She knows that Rafael doesn't love her, but she thought he at least cared about her some. But when he trades her body for a hitman's services, she learns that she was wrong. And though the hours she spends in the arms of a cold-blooded killer shouldn't matter to a girl whose boyfriend sells drugs for a living, Drea expected more. And when she doesn't get it, she chooses revenge instead. Siphoning two million dollars from Rafael's accounts, Drea runs for her life. She plans to start all over again in middle America where Rafael can't find her. Only she doesn't expect that he'll send the one man after her who she can't escape--the hitman whose touch she craves even as she runs from it.
I've heard a lot of talk on romance boards over the past few years saying that Linda Howard has lost her touch and that her newer books aren't as good as the old ones. Well, with Death Angel, she's proving her critics wrong. This book was fantastic, and quite possibly my favorite of all her works (though After the Night is still pretty high on my list). The hitman (Simon, whose name I neglected to mention because you don't find it out until later in the story) is a quintessential Howard hero. He's all militaristic stealth and alpha male aggression combined with protective lover and guardian of the innocent. In other words, everything you could want in a hero. At times he seems remote, distant, and unsure of himself, and you don't know if this is the sort of hero you can root for. But when he goes after Drea it isn't with any malice and at the same time he's hunting her he's cheering her on for giving Salinas a taste of his own medicine. And Drea is of the nouveau class of Howard heroines. At one time they were dumb as doornails (think Mary in Mackenzie's Mountain), but now it's like Howard has realized it's okay for a girl to have both beauty and brains. And Drea has them both in spades. This is a girl who plays dumb for two years while she secretly stores account numbers and exchanges real diamonds for fake ones. Drea doesn't delude herself into thinking she has an infinite amount of time with Rafael. In fact, she knows the moment someone prettier and younger catches his eye that she'll be out the door. Which is why she has her contingency plan. In fact, the only reason she takes Rafael to the cleaners is that he proves to her that she means nothing to him, so she decides to take what she thinks she's worth. And I was cheering for her even as I hoped Simon wouldn't catch her.
And all of this is without even mentioning the chemistry between these two characters, which virtually sizzles off the pages. From the moment they touch, the temperature went up in my apartment, and it didn't go down at any point when the two of them were together. I can't remember the last time I've been so emotionally invested and intently engaged by a book--particularly romantic suspense. Linda Howard is the reigning queen of the genre and Death Angel is just another weapon in her arsenal that proves why she got the title.
I've heard a lot of talk on romance boards over the past few years saying that Linda Howard has lost her touch and that her newer books aren't as good as the old ones. Well, with Death Angel, she's proving her critics wrong. This book was fantastic, and quite possibly my favorite of all her works (though After the Night is still pretty high on my list). The hitman (Simon, whose name I neglected to mention because you don't find it out until later in the story) is a quintessential Howard hero. He's all militaristic stealth and alpha male aggression combined with protective lover and guardian of the innocent. In other words, everything you could want in a hero. At times he seems remote, distant, and unsure of himself, and you don't know if this is the sort of hero you can root for. But when he goes after Drea it isn't with any malice and at the same time he's hunting her he's cheering her on for giving Salinas a taste of his own medicine. And Drea is of the nouveau class of Howard heroines. At one time they were dumb as doornails (think Mary in Mackenzie's Mountain), but now it's like Howard has realized it's okay for a girl to have both beauty and brains. And Drea has them both in spades. This is a girl who plays dumb for two years while she secretly stores account numbers and exchanges real diamonds for fake ones. Drea doesn't delude herself into thinking she has an infinite amount of time with Rafael. In fact, she knows the moment someone prettier and younger catches his eye that she'll be out the door. Which is why she has her contingency plan. In fact, the only reason she takes Rafael to the cleaners is that he proves to her that she means nothing to him, so she decides to take what she thinks she's worth. And I was cheering for her even as I hoped Simon wouldn't catch her.
And all of this is without even mentioning the chemistry between these two characters, which virtually sizzles off the pages. From the moment they touch, the temperature went up in my apartment, and it didn't go down at any point when the two of them were together. I can't remember the last time I've been so emotionally invested and intently engaged by a book--particularly romantic suspense. Linda Howard is the reigning queen of the genre and Death Angel is just another weapon in her arsenal that proves why she got the title.
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