Michele Albert, One Way Out

One Way Out

Michele Albert

Pocket, Mar 2005, $6.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0743485025

Their first clash occurred five years ago and every time they meet they argue. Paleontologist Professor Dr. Alex Martinelli detests commercial collector Cassie Ashton because she buys and sells fossils in the market place. He thinks of her as the E-Bay of the dinosaur crowd. Deep inside he envies her uncanny skills in somehow locating dinosaur bones, but he would never admit that to anyone. She enjoys their legendary confrontations in a perverse manner so she always makes them worse than they have to be.

This time she has a find that she wants only Alex to know of and to confirm what she thinks may be an intact infant T-Rex. This would be the motherload so Alex agrees to take a look. Alex and Cassie work out a deal; she takes him to the spot where he sees nirvana as he affirms the find. However, someone steals "Trixie" and the two partners initially suspect the other of a double cross, but quickly realize a third party is involved. As they conclude that their years of heated bickering were a courtship, the in-love partners pursue the kidnapped Trixie.

This exciting, romantic, suspense novel stars two scuffling dinosaur experts whose exchanges make for a fine tale. The storyline is action-packed, but belongs to the battling bone hunters whose wars are as legendary as their finds (think of INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when Jones meets Marion Ravenwood in her remote bar). As the two near-fortyish couple (she has a teenage son) tries for a cease fire, they soon are jumping each others bones. Michele Albert provides a fine, exhilarating, way-out tale of love amongst the dinosaur remains.

Harriet Klausner