“There’s no in-person interaction anymore. Hardly anyone goes to church—at least around here. Hardly anyone belongs to leagues or social clubs, like our grandparents did. Work is the one place where people spend enough time together to actually get to know each other, and it’s the one place where developing a deep, meaningful relationship is forbidden. What kind of world is this?”

*

The boldly-colored tattoos on his milk-white arms made him look like a choirboy who’d fallen asleep on the subway and been vandalized.

Freddy Ferguson, hero of Kill Romeo, the second book in a series, is a former heavyweight boxer, former mob thug (reformed), and now a Washington, DC private eye. He’s in a small Virginia town doing a background check on a prospective political candidate. It’s a quick and easy job, and when it’s done he takes a walk in the woods. That’s when he discovers the body of a woman, dressed all in white, lying on a river bank. A storm is blowing up, the river is rising, and he tries to move the body to higher ground. The river pulls it away from him, and he barely gets out alive himself.

He reports the discovery (and loss) of the body to the local sheriff, but their department is overwhelmed in the storm’s aftermath. Also, there’s no local woman unaccounted for. Freddy feels bad about this, but it’s not his case. However, his local host, a cheerful busybody, uncovers a single clue. Since business is slow, Harry agrees to follow that clue up. Gradually, bit by bit, puzzle pieces are uncovered. They lead Freddy and his team to places he’d never have guessed, and to a crime with mob, big business, and international implications.

Meanwhile, there’s trouble at the office. Freddy and his partner have two employees, and are evaluating a new investigator, Claire. Freddy likes Claire – too much. Not only is she a really top-notch detective, she’s beautiful and extremely appealing. He can’t stop thinking about her, but he knows office romances are absolutely forbidden in this day and age. He’s going crazy over Claire, and is very much afraid he’s going to have to quit or else he’ll do something that could get him in big trouble.

For this reader, Kill Romeo genuinely fell into the over-used category of “gripping.” The mystery was interesting, and Freddy’s awkward, uncomfortable passion for Claire is both funny and compelling. The topic of romance in the age of political correctness is an awkward one for me, so my personal discomfort rendered the dramatic tension all the more agonizing.

Also, there was a one-sentence chapter, which is cute when not overused.

Pretty good book, and it struck some blows against PC. I might read the prequel and the sequel.