Carlene Thompson, Last Whisper

Last Whisper

Carlene Thompson

St. Martin's, Sep 2006, $6.99

ISBN: 0312937288

In Charleston, West Virginia, she was eleven when her stepfather Zachary Tavell ended her childhood by killing her mother and pointing the gun at her head. Brooke Yeager was lucky to escape with her life.

Fifteen years later, Brooke is a successful realtor mentoring twenty-one years old Mia Walters. They go to show a house late at night, but no one shows up. Brooke allows Mia to drive her new car, but before they leave someone shoots the driver. A stunned Brooke runs to a nearby house that she is familiar with from her last bout of violence. This is the home of now retired Detective Sam Lockhart, who with his late wife was so kind to her when she dealt with her mom's murder. Though widower Sam suffers from Alzheimer's, he takes in Brooke while his son mystery writer Vincent wants her to leave. While the two male Lockharts try to keep her safe from her stepfather, who escaped prison, Brooke and Vincent fall in love; however she fears attachments as people she love like her daddy who died from cancer when she eight and her mother "leave".

Last Whispers is an exhilarating romantic suspense thriller that starts off at hyperspeed and never slows down until the final family reunion. The action-packed storyline is driven by relationships to include those dead. Sam worries about Brooke; Vincent worries about Sam; Brooke worries about the Lockharts. Though Zachary's thirst for vengeance seems at first over the top, a terrific plausible twist makes everything possible and creditable so that readers obtain a fantastic tale from one of the stars of the sub-genre, Carlene Thompson.

Harriet Klausner