Donna Ball, Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire

Donna Ball

Signet, December 2006, $6.99, 240 pp.

ISBN 0451219996

Summer has come to her small Smokey Mountains town of Hansonville, North Carolina, and local resident Raine Stockton finds herself so busy she doesn't have a chance to relax. Her kennel business is booming with more people coming in for dog training lessons, and her part time job in the forest service keeps her so busy she doesn't have time to think.

Raine has loved two men in her life; radical environmentalist Andy Fontana, and the man she married Deputy Sheriff Buck Lawson. Andy has been on the run for close to fifteen years, after he was linked to a bombing of a petrochemical plant that killed four people. The FBI believe that he went on to commit other acts, costing more lives, and they also think he is coming back home to dig up millions of dollars in diamonds he buried in the mountains to fund a mid-east terrorist organization. Raine doesn't want to believe Andy is capable of any act of violence. The FBI and Homeland Security are sure he is trying to see her, so the authorities ask her to tell them if she meets with him. Raine needs to know if the man she once loved is capable of the acts he is accused of. If she meets with him, she will get her answers, even if they aren't to her liking.

Donna Ball has created one of the most delightful heroines ever to grease the pages of a mystery book. She is funny, loyal, stubborn and endearing. Although she isn't living with her husband, readers will not believe that they will divorce. Readers get a real taste of what living in a small town mountain town is like. RAPID FIRE is a fantastic down home charming mystery.