Colleen Thompson Fade the Heat

Fade the Heat

Colleen Thompson

Love Spell, Dec 2005, $6.99, 368 pp.

ISBN: 0505526484

All he wanted to do was live up to the Hippocratic Oath by providing medical care to the children of illegal immigrants. Instead Dr. Jack Montoya has become pilloried on talk show radio for providing services that enable these outsiders to stay and becoming a hero worshipped by the Latino community for getting involved. He wants neither; he just wants to be recognized as a good doctor by his patients.

Asthmatic firefighter Reagan Hurley turns to Jack her childhood friend to sign documents that would allow her to return to work, but instead he shows a siege mentality behaving nasty and cynical towards her. Jack refuses to sign anything as he warily has become a victim of a war on illegal aliens. When an arsonist tries to burn down Jack's apartment, but in the process kills Reagan's captain, they team up to bring this fiery killer to justice while trying to overcome being considered pariahs by everyone including her peers. This drives them close to each other as love blossoms between them.

The arson homicide who-done-it is cleverly designed so that the audience never knows who committed the act until the climax. Yet as exhilarating as that key subplot is, the story line is owned by the lead couple as readers will commiserate with Reagan wanting to return to the front lines and with a beleaguered Jack tired of his fifteen minutes as a pawn. Colleen Thompson keeps the heat high with this strong thriller that also focuses on the issue of medical and other public assistance to the children of illegal immigrants.

Harriet Klausner