Ruthless People

Blood Always Tells  by Hilary Davidson (Forge hardcover, 15 April 2014).

Dominique Monaghan finds out that her married lover is cheating on both her and his wife, and decides to get even by blackmailing him.  Her plan is to confront him when they are at Gary's country home for the weekend, but before she can do it, they are both kidnapped.

The kidnappers load them into the back of a van and drive for a few hours.  They end up at an isolated house that looks creepy enough to be haunted.  Dominique and Gary are forced inside and shut in separate rooms.  But Dominique is nothing if not resourceful, and she manages to steal a cell-phone long enough to call her big brother Desmond.

Desmond is the quintessential Good Guy and spends a lot of time volunteering for Causes. He feels like he's been cleaning up Dominique's messes forever.  He happens to be on a date when he talks to his sister, and when he hears her convoluted tale he rushes off to find her.

But what he discovers when he arrives creates more questions than answers, and he ends up on a lengthy quest that involves multiple law enforcement agencies, a couple of shady lawyers, and Gary's wealthy socialite wife.

The plot of this standalone contains many twists, but it's not unwieldy.  It's a different type of novel than Davidson's Lily Moore series, but still gripping and suspenseful.  You may find yourself reading long into the night rather than put this book down.


FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the author for the Advance Reading Copy.

Revenge is Bitter

Evil in All Its Disguises (Lily Moore #3) by Hilary Davidson (Forge hardcover, 5 March 2013).

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.


Travel journalist Lily Moore takes a press junket to a resort in Acapulco.  She's a little surprised at how well she's treated on this trip:  business class flight, then a suite at the Hotel Cerón.  Also surprisingly, there are few other guests at the hotel, but the staff inform her that the place hasn't opened to the public yet.

She's taken aback yet again when she runs into another travel writer, Sky McDermott, who doesn't look well:  not only is she much thinner, but she appears to have been recently weeping.  She brushes aside Lily's concern, attributing her appearance to allergies, but Lily can't help but sense undercurrents of ... something.

Over drinks, Skye tells Lily that she's planing to write an investigative piece, in order to get even with someone she was recently involved with.  When she leaves their table in the bar to make a phone call, but doesn't return, Lily becomes more uneasy.  Then she learns that the hotel is part of an umbrella group owned by her ex-fiancé, Martin Sklar, and she's certain that something is amiss.

Hilary Davidson has also been a travel writer, so Lily's professional life is based on her own experiences, but it's her skill with language that makes her prose superb, as evidenced by the opening paragraph of the first chapter:

The snake had coiled itself halfway around my ankle by the time I spotted it.  Cool and smooth against my skin, it inched across my sandaled foot, turning its head back and upward to meet my gaze.  Its slender body was striped with red and yellow and blackish brown. Even though its eyes were all but invisible in its glossy dark head, I was sure it was regarding me with pure defiance.

Her proficiency extends to the construction of the plot; the story is enthralling and very difficult to put down.  It's easy enough to understand what's going on if (like me) one hasn't read the previous books in the series.  I'm definitely going to the library as soon as I can to find them.


FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the author for the advance reading copy of this book.