Jayne Krentz writes romantic suspense, sometimes with a paranormal twist and sometimes without. Smoke and Mirrors is a “without” story and it’s one of Krentz’s better novels with vivid characters and a twisting plot.
Leonora is packing up her dead half-sister Meredith’s apartment when Thomas Walker stalks in and accuses her of helping Meridith embezzle 1.5 million dollars from the college endowment his family funded. Despite this unpleasant beginning the two feel a solid connection, and when Leonora receives a posthumous email from Meredith telling her how to collect the money, she contacts Thomas.
Thomas’s brother, Deke, lost his wife, supposedly to suicide about a year earlier. Deke is convinced someone murdered his wife although there is no real evidence, and Thomas is helping Deke reluctantly. Once Leonora arrives that changes because Leonora provides a link between Meredith and Deke’s wife. The brothers team up with Leonora to discover the truth.
It looks like everything is wrapped up, we have the killer and his accomplices, but look! It’s only page 210 and we have another 53 pages to go. Right about now a minor character wafts through the room and all we suspense readers know what that means. Even with the huge tell from the page count we still have to read through to the end to learn how Krentz ties up all the loose strings.
The romance between Leonora and Thomas is intense and fast with plenty of sex scenes and a recurring bad double-entendre. None the less Krentz does her magic and we care about the characters. I found Deke and his love interest, Cassie, more interesting than Leonora, and Leonora’s ex fiance, the obnoxious English professor, was all too realistic.
Smoke in Mirrors is a very fast read, figure 3 hours or so, and it grabs you and takes you along for the ride. Aside from the sex scenes there is very little vulgarity and one blasphemy.
4 Stars or a bit less
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