Karin Tabke, Skin

Skin

Karin Tabke

Pocket, April 2007, $14.00, 354 pp.

ISBN 1416524924

The only legitimate business that the Donatello family owns is Skin, which Francesca "Frankie" Donatello is turning into a skin magazine for women. Her father Santini doesn't like his only daughter being involved in such an enterprise and at their last meeting harsh words were exchanged that could never be taken back because someone killed him soon afterward. Frankie is looking for a spectacular model to boost sales and gain more advertisements and Reese Bronson fits the bill.

Frankie has doubts about the hunk because he stimulates her hormones until she feels like she is in a Bronson fever. What she doesn't know is that he is an undercover officer who works the case of who killed Santini. Frankie is the only honest person in her dysfunctional family but it takes her a while to believe someone has taken a hit out on her. Reese's colleagues believe the mafia princess killed her father for embezzling funds from the magazine and she arranged it to look like her life was in danger. Reese doesn't want to believe it because he has fallen for Frankie but the evidence starts pointing to her being a stone cold killer.

SKIN is an exciting, sizzling, police-procedural romance that will appeal to readers who like a lot of sex in their romantic suspense novels. Karin Tabke is a first rate storyteller who creates characters that the audience will like. It is fascinating to watch the heroine be surrounded by criminals and stay honest and clean with nary a parking ticket to her name. Yet the author plants seeds of doubt in the form of evidence that makes the audience wonder if the mafia princess is a sociopath or a framed innocent.

Harriet Klausner