Collateral Damage - Lynette Eason

Collateral Damage is the first book of four planned in Lynette Eason’s new Danger Never Sleeps series.  In this first novel, phsychiatrist Brooke Adams and former Special operative Asher James find themselves running for their lives when a killer strikes.

Brooke is still recovering from the burns she suffered during a bombing in Afghanistan during her army service, and has just begun to rebuild her life and career in the civilian world.  But the publication of a series of photographs of her during the immediate aftermath of the bombing triggers a series of events which have deadly results. 

Asher was also directly affected by the bombing in Kabul. Recognising Brooke in the photos, he arranges to see her, hoping she can help him with his PTSD. Arriving at Brooke's office for his appointment the last thing he expects to find is a dead woman on the floor... 

As Asher tries to keep Brooke and himself alive and work out what is going on, they soon find that the situation they are in is a lot bigger than they thought. This is no local incident, but the result of a horrifying criminal operation which spans continents.

This is another superb Christian suspense novel from Lynette Eason, who certainly knows how to spin a tale and maintain the headlong pace for an entire book. This is a complex novel, with a good number of changes of direction and quite a few ‘cast’ members.  Occasionally, I found myself getting muddled by ‘who was who’ but overall this is an engrossing read with a very well laid out plot and the bad guys are truly evil.  There was at least one place where I gasped out loud in shock as we discover something!

Brooke and Asher are very well created characters, and their respective PTSD episodes are well told and very believable.  A bit less believable, for me anyway, is the heavily Christian conversation which Brooke has with Monica.  It felt a bit jarring against the rest of the book where the Christian elements are woven in in a more ‘faith living’ way.

This is a proper suspense novel, and the tension grows throughout the book as the various strands of the story begin to merge.  There were a couple of times when I correctly guessed who had done something/what they had done, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the story at all.  

I also enjoyed meeting Gavin Black, Heather, Kat, Caden and some of the other characters and wonder if we’ll meet some of them in the forthcoming novels in the series.

The romance is nicely done, even if some of the earlier elements felt a bit unlikely to me. Good stories mean that I push back my cynicism a bit though, and this is definitely a good story!  Suspense readers will find this a book they don’t want to put down until the satisfying end.

9780800729349, Revell, published in the UK February 20.

For transparency, I work with Revell books in the UK, but I am not required to write any specific review. All views herein are my own.