Sue Civil-Brown Hurricane Hannah

Hurricane Hannah

Sue Civil-Brown

HQN, Jun 2006, $6.99

ISBN: 0373771142

Pilot Hannah Lamont buys, refurbishes, and sells corporate jets. Her latest purchase suddenly has problems forcing her to seek an emergency landing spot in the middle of the Caribbean. Hannah lucks out as she lands on an airstrip on Treasure Island.

Airport owner Buck Shanahan is irate as her landing cost him a key winning hand in poker that would have decided the fate of the island. His opponent Bill Anston wants to build a major casino; Buck wants to maintain the status quo of tiki hut casinos. Wondering if she landed in a rabbit hole of poker players as all disputes are decided by cards, Hannah and Buck begin to fall in love, something neither desires even as an alligator acts like a puppy dog around the female outsider.

HURRICANE HANNAH is a wild zany contemporary romance starring a heroine who believes she crashed her plane inside Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole especially as she meets and plays poker with the eccentrics that make up the support cast (including Buster the alligator). The story line is played for laughs as Buck and Hannah are attracted to one another, but try unsuccessfully to keep their distance. The use of poker to mediate disputes (picture Bush vs. Kerry or Bush vs. Kim over the draw of cards) seems a better approach to dispute resolution; the final confrontation between Hannah and volcanologist Edna Harkin with the weapons of choice being poker and the stakes a couple of hunks proves that. Sue Civil-Brown provides a way out tale that satires romance novels, politics, and the poker trend.

Harriet Klausner