Connie Lane, Dirty Little Lies

Dirty Little Lies

Connie Lane

Dell, Apr 2004, $6.50

ISBN: 0440237475

Miss Kansas Summer Squash, Lacie Jo Baxter finished her upbeat speech at the opening of Mercer's Drug Store in Klaber Falls only to have someone toss her into a car's trunk. As the vehicle speeds off Lacie Jo holds tightly onto her baton while encouraging herself by saying "Not a pushover". They stop at Whipple Farm seven miles from town with nothing in between. The buoyant Lacie Jo hits her kidnapper with her baton and escapes.

FBI agent Ben Camaglia is in exile working on doing nothing as there has not been much demand to investigate crop circles lately. Ben knows that if the incident of necessary roughness of the senator's son occurred today, he would pound the idiot even more. His first assignment in Kansas is to insure that is no future abduction of Lacie Jo occurs. The twosome are immediately attracted to one another, but neither expects anything to happen between them. That is until the kidnapper tries to snatch Lacie Jo, putting Ben in panic over the safety of the woman he loves.

Fans of romantic suspense will appreciate this delightful thriller with its congenial tidbits involving beauty contests, though the exciting story line centers on the abductions of Lacie Jo and the DIRTY LITTLE LIES behind them. Lacie Jo is a brave person while Big Ben feels like a large fish in a pond too small until his beloved is taken again. The over use of complex sentences means keeping an oxygen tank handy (periods would help) though Connie Lane provides a terse tale with amusing asides that will please sub-genre readers that this author has moved into this nest.

Harriet Klausner