He was an outsider
And the only man she could trust.
Attorney Marlee Masters's brother was murdered. Proving
it means working with Sheriff Ben Kinsella and facing down the nasty whispers
in their rural Georgia town. Although the gossips accuse Marlee of being the
real threat, there's a stalker vowing retribution if the two don't end the
investigation. Ben won't abandon Marlee in her hour of need, but will she have
to place herself in even more peril to catch the killer?
Good start to the new series. Marlee is a newly minted
attorney who looks forward to finding a job in the city. She grew up in a small
town where her father runs the town's most prominent business and the town. She
knows he wants her and her brother to take over the company, but she wants
nothing to do with it. When her brother dies, the pressure is on for Marlee to
return home. That pressure increases when a second young man dies by suicide.
Marlee's brother Jeff's death was ruled a suicide, but
Marlee believes he was murdered. That suspicion is reinforced when she unearths
some suspicious land transactions in the company's files. Proving those
suspicions means working with Ben, the town's new sheriff.
Ben took the job as sheriff after his career as a DEA
agent came to a violent end. With Ben's undercover identity blown, Atlanta's
drug kingpin vowed revenge if Ben showed his face there again. Since most of
the town's law enforcement was caught up in a vast meth bust, Ben has to rebuild
the community's trust. Not an easy task for an outsider. The last thing he
needs is to get involved with Marlee.
I enjoyed seeing the relationship develop between Marlee
and Ben. The sparks flew from the moment they met, but Ben tried to resist
them. His past as an inner-city kid and undercover agent and her plans to leave
town as soon as possible are strong deterrents to involvement. Marlee, on the other
hand, is quite willing to see where the attraction takes them. I liked seeing
them get to know each other, from sharing their pasts to sharing onion rings. I
also enjoyed seeing Marlee stand up to her father when he had other ideas. When
everything was all over, Ben and Marlee had to decide if they wanted to find a
way to be together. I liked the hospital scene at the end as Ben laid it all on
the line for her. Marlee's response was excellent.
The suspense of the story was good. The second suicide,
whose details were disturbingly similar to Jeff's, roused Ben's suspicions. Marlee's
questions about the land sales around the lake offered a possible link between
the two. The difficulty was figuring out who pulled the strings and why. I
found Marlee's deductions intriguing and the twist over the land ownership a surprise.
Complicating matters, Marlee had a stalker who threatened retribution if they
didn't stop investigating. I thought I had the stalker figured out, but even
that had an unexpected twist. The showdown at the end didn't go the way I
thought it would, but it was satisfying nonetheless. 
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