Rachel Butler Deep Cover

Deep Cover

Rachel Butler

Dell, Dec 2005, $6.99, 374 pp.

ISBN 0440241219

She knew him as William Davis, a man who rescued her from rape in the back streets of Ocho Rios in Jamaica. After he killed the man who tried to rape fourteen year old Selena McCaffrey, he took her back to the United States and introduced her as his "niece". She later finds out that he is living a dual identity. In his other life as Henry Daniels he is the chief of police. Whenever he took a job as a chief of police Henry's alter ego established himself as the area's most powerful drug lord.

He sends Selena to Oklahoma to kill a police officer who is getting too close to unmasking his identity. Instead of killing him Selena falls in love with Tony and becomes a key witness for the FBI. They want her to take down William's organization because he is brain dead although he is hooked up to monitors. They want her to work from the inside the organization and gather enough evidence to arrest the main players. If she refuses, they threaten her with jail time or deportation so she accepts their offer knowing in advance that people who want to control William's empire will try to kill her. She has to hope the FBI and her own street smarts are enough to keep her alive so she can have a future with Tony.

In DEEP COVER, there are the obvious villains and the not so obvious ones. The latter make this action packed, dynamite thriller a winner because the heroine (and the reader) doesn't know who to trust. Selena gets the answer to her heritage but the price is quite high and her lover Tony works overtime to protect her from enemies that seem to come out of the woodwork especially family she has never met or knew existed. Rachel Butler gives Janet Evanovich a turn for her money will this fantastic crime thriller in which double crosses are the norm.

Harriet Klausner