PopSyndicate.com

Sexy, suspenseful, and so intense you won’t be able to put it down. Jordan Dane once again delivers in this first in a two-part series.

Jordan Dane is one of those authors who broke into romantic suspense in a big way. Her first novel, No One Heard Her Scream, debuted to rave reviews two years ago. It’s now published in Germany under the title Shadow Killer, and continues to draw readers this long after it first came out.

I snagged the book at my local Borders a few days before my editor forwarded No One Left to Tell, her latest hotly sensual thriller. I thought I would just skim the first few pages before going back to her first novel, but after the first few lines, I was hooked. I did not put it down until I read the last line of the 374-page novel.

Detective Raven MacKenzie and her partner land a gruesome murder case at a Chicago church. The body of a Dunhill Corporation security executive is hanging, upside, from a cross, discovered by a kind-hearted priest who ties it to a trouble man who also works for Dunhill.

Christian Delacorte is a hard man with a tortured past that keeps him living in a terrifying limbo. He was at the church, visiting a grave, the night the body was found. That makes him a key suspect in the case. Detective MacKenzie’s gut says otherwise. Her instant attraction to the troubled man aside, she knows he is innocent, and believes his past is tied to the crime. They make an uneasy truce to find the killer, not realizing that MacKenzie is now the target of a heartless killer bent on revenge.

Intensely riveting, with sexual tension that leaps off the page, Dane has crafted a novel that far exceeds many in the genre today. She carefully weaves in tiny details – some veteran genre readers will immediately catch – to keep readers guessing at the whodunit until the very end. I was impressed with her balance of the romantic notions of MacKenzie and Delacorte and the vicious details of the case. She gets into the head of the frighteningly heartless killer in such a way that goosebumps will inevitably break out on your skin. Christian Delacorte is a believable, broken man who needs something bright and beautiful to make him once again believe in the future. Raven MacKenzie has dealt with her own tragedies and is able to support Christian in a way that no one else could.

Sometimes the dialogue felt unrealistic and a little cheesy, but it doesn’t break the romantic suspense readers’ stride. It might be distracting to those who crave police procedurals, but Dane’s style is so intense you will easily overcome the distraction. We did not really get an answer as to why the killer hates MacKenzie’s family, and I hope for more of an explanation in the follow up novel, No One Lives Forever. The teaser for that book, which appears at the end of No One Left to Tell, has me waiting impatiently for it to arrive in the mail.

Jordan Dane will appear on Pop Syndicate’s book blog the week of July 21. Visit her Web site for details on the writer and her novels.