Hello, and welcome back! Our snow from last week is mostly melted now, though we might get a bit more in the coming week. The big football game is on in the next room, and all the males of the household are watching and cheering for their teams, which means I get to read uninterrupted. And I'm going to get plenty of uninterrupted reading time in the coming week, which is definitely not a bad thing, as I have not a rather sizable stack of February romances on the corner of my desk.

This time out, I have the latest from Suzanne Brockmann, Dark of Night (Ballantine). Only a couple people in the world know that Jimmy Nash isn't really dead, but someone else suspects it, and they'll stop at nothing to find him and really kill him this time. Including putting his friends and loved ones into mortal danger. After all, if one is willing to commit murder, what's a little torture, right? His best friend and co-worker Lawrence Decker is determined to find out who that someone is, but the very attractive Troubleshooters receptionist, Tracy Shapiro gets in his way. Then, too, Sohpia Ghaffari and Dave Malkoff have just recently started a serious relationship, after years of Dave's loving her from afar, and an attack on Dave brings them into the range of fire on the hunt for information on Nash. Brockmann fans will love seeing all their favorite characters in action again, as Decker brings in more of their co-workers, federal agent friends, and military pals to help with the operation. For me, that's part of the problem: there are way too many characters here for me to be certain just who the main couple is supposed to be. There's plenty of action, a bit of history, and some steamy encounters among these couples. But, as with the past couple novels in this series, I'm having a hard time liking these as romance novels. They're good stories, but I don't think I can say they're great romances. I really wanted to love this one, and I recall thinking as it started with Dave and Sophia, 'woohoo!' Then it went back to the pattern set in the past few tales for the Troubleshooters, and I was quite a bit less happy. If you're a die-hard Brockmann fan, you'll probably want to rush out and grab this one if you haven't yet. If you're on the fence, you might still disagree with me. If you felt the same way about her last few books as I did, you might want to read this one, but I believe you'll wind up disappointed, as I was. This one's earned only three of Cupid's five arrows.

Until next time, happy reading!