"exciting urban thriller"

Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Kate White prosecutes her first case in court when embarrassingly her cellphone chimes. Judge Michael Moran "the moron" tells her to shut it now; Kate worries her young son Ben needs her when the shots are fired by the defendant "Little" Julie Soto. Moran is dead with his head blown off and two other prisoners join in the melee. Soto abducts Kate to allegedly use as a hostage while escaping.

Kate manages to escape while believing she killed Soto in doing so. However, she is not free as someone stalks her and Ben even breaking into their home. Philadelphia Police Detective Tom Braga leads the official investigation into the courtroom murder and its aftermath. He thinks Kate's escape was planned by her captors and that Soto lives. As he tries to keep the single mom and her son safe, Tom begins to connect the dots leading back to when 1994 Baltimore when fifteen years old Katrina Kominski was part of the foster care system.

This exciting urban thriller works because the audience believes that fully developed Kate and Ben are in deep trouble, and that Tom feels a deep need to protect them from Soto and who knows who else. The story line is fast- paced from the moment Kate's cellphone rings a Pussycat Dolls tune and never slows down until the final biting confrontation. Karen Robards provides a strong entertaining romantic suspense.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted May 25, 2008

Summary

In the newest novel from New York Times-bestselling author Karen Robards, a feisty female attorney's past comes back to haunt her.

One cold November night when Kat White was fifteen years old, she and some friends held up a convenience store. In the heat of the moment, one of the others shot and killed an off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard. Kat and her pals fled the scene in a panic, and no one was caught.

Sixteen years later, Kat—now Kate—has built a new life for herself. Now a single mom with an eight-year-old son, she works as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia DA's office. But her dark past rears its head when she walks into court one day and discovers that she is to prosecute Mario Castellanos, one of her friends from that terrible night.

Kate is in a bind: even though Mario was the one who probably did commit the crime, he's counting on Kate to make sure he's not convicted. If she convinces the judge of his guilt, he'll claim that she was the one who killed the off-duty cop. Before real despair sets in, Mario is found dead—in her apartment, and with her pistol. When homicide detective Tom Braga shows up to investigate the murder, Kate is far from relieved; the two have clashed since she started working for the prosecutor's office. But when another man who knows the secret of Kate's past gets involved in the investigation, she learns that her life—and her son's—are in danger. Frantic, she realizes that she has nowhere to turn. Except, maybe, to Tom . . .