โ Scribed by Woods, Stuart
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
This second thriller in the series Woods inaugurated with Orchid Beach starts with a bang a literal one. While series heroine Holly Barker, a former military police commander turned police chief of smalltown Orchid Beach, Fla., waits at the local courthouse to marry lawyer Jackson Oxenhandler, her fianc gets himself killed in a shoot-out at Orchid Beach's bank. Once past this shocker of an opening, the thrills quickly deflate. Holly stifles a few sobs, gets back into uniform and sets off to track down the gunmen, a gang of highly organized robbers who planned to heist $4 million in payroll cash. It soon becomes clear that they aren't ordinary robbers, however, appearing to have some connection to a weird little town in a neighboring county, where the average resident is white, male and a gun nut. In the course of his meandering tale, Woods deepens his portraits of Holly and her father, Ham, a retired army noncom, and dog lovers should enjoy the antics of Daisy, the Doberman diva who is Holly's constant companion. Stone Barrington, the cop-turned-lawyer from such Woods bestsellers as L.A. Dead, makes a couple of important cameo appearances. But pages of lifeless dialogue and too much dead air in an already thin narrative eventually stifle most of the book's energy. Woods knows how law enforcement agencies from local cop shops to the Secret Service work, and his action scenes are clean and sharp. But in between there are a lot of empty spaces. 16-city author tour.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
"Orchid blues," indeed: Holly's wedding day is ruined by a nearby bank robbery that leaves no clues but one unfortunate corpse, and when she investigates she finds that the robbery has political trimmings.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Special Agent Holly Barker returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, and faces off against an old nemesis--the man she brought charges against for sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rape. The army officer in question was acquitted of all charges, and is now Orchid Beach's new police chie
### Amazon.com Review Talk about a bad first day. Major Holly Barker thought she was getting out of a mess when she left the army. She'd been sexually harassed by her superior, but the exigencies of the military legal system wound up wrecking *her* career. Orchid Beach seemed like the perfect place
### From Publishers Weekly In Woods's 24th novel-his third in the Holly Barker series (after Orchid Blues)-the prolific bestselling novelist revisits savvy, sexy ex-MP officer (and her dog, Daisy), now police chief of the small Florida east coast town of Orchid Beach. As the fast-paced but fluffy a
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Now the bestselling author brings back his small-town chief of police--and her extraordinary Doberman, Daisy--for another exhilarating adventure. . . . When Holly's wedding festivities are shattered by a brutal robbery, she vows to find the culprits. With nothing to go on but the inexplicable killin
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