TEST
If you pick up Mesmerized looking for romantic suspense, you won’t find it here – this is a good, old-fashioned spy novel. By the time I’d finished about a third of the book, I realized that the male and female protagonists had only met once – very briefly – and hadn’t exactly fallen deeply in love. I have to admit, however, that I was deeply engrossed in the story by that point, so I didn’t much care.
Mesmerized is a darn good spy novel at that. Perhaps not always as suspenseful as it could be – occasionally I forgot that the hero and heroine didn’t know as much as I did about what was really going on, and so I got a little impatient with them. But it is still an excellent read that kept me turning pages. The plot is a more than a little byzantine, but I’ll try to hit the major points without revealing spoilers.
The book opens with the death of the heroine, Beth Convey – an unusual way to start a book, one must admit. A young but highly successful lawyer in the extremely competitive environment of the US capital, she had been suffering heart twinges for months, misdiagnosed as stress by her internist. It turns out she really had advanced heart disease, and she awakens in chapter two with a new heart in her chest, feeling much better, but a little strange – not quite herself. She has visions and dreams about men speaking in Russian, and in the dreams, she’s one of them. She sees the death of her donor. She craves vodka, and tomatoes with both salt and sugar, an old Russian favorite. Confused, she turns to her doctor, who explains that there is a branch of – in his opinion – psuedo-scientific study dealing with “cellular memory,” the idea that not only the brain, but all cells of the body, and the heart in particular, are responsible for thoughts, memories, and emotional responses. There is sufficient evidence to prove that this is more than possibility, but like her doctor, Beth adopts an attitude of skepticism, and tries to get on with her life.
Meanwhile, former FBI agent Jeff Hammond – whom we soon learn isn’t actually “former” at all – is tracking former KGB-turned-defectors (whom he believes are also not particularly “former”) in the D.C. area. He reports secretly to higher-ups in the Bureau, but his former partner Eli Kirkhart is still suspicious. When a secret non-FBI coalition asks Eli to help them find the high level mole that has been leaking top secret info to the Russians, he immediately puts Jeff on the top of his list. At the same time, two of the three Russians Jeff has been keeping tabs on die suspiciously, and the third disappears. And someone is trying to frame Jeff for murder.
A year after her surgery, Beth dreams again of her donor’s murder, and when she awakes, something inside of her is screaming out a phone number so loudly that she can’t ignore it – even at the risk of losing her most important legal battle ever. She calls the number, and soon finds herself at the scene of a crime, stumbling onto the body of a dying man she recognizes as “Yuri” although she has never seen him in a waking moment. He gives her some important info, and then dies. She runs from the scene, only to find herself faced with the person she assumes is the killer: Jeff. Fleeing him, she falls and hits her head and in the morning awakes alone in a strange hotel.
And that’s just the beginning. For readers who love a great plot with a lot of interesting information about Russian nationalism, politics, and culture, and enjoy the mechanics of the spy game, I highly recommend this book. For those looking for romance, you’ll find only a sparse tale of attraction and shared life-threatening experiences coalescing into something more. Although the characters were likable enough, the reader gets very little information on the heroine, and most of it not until the end. The book sets up an interesting parallel between the heroine who doesn’t quite recognize the person she has become with her new heart, and a Russian general who has spent too long in an American disguise, and is becoming more and more unsure of his true identity. However, there isn’t enough follow-through on this, and since we never get to see much of who Beth was before the surgery, it’s hard to sympathize with the changes she sees. There is, however, sufficient emphasis on the general for him to be sympathetic, and just a bit more in-depth focus could make put him among the most memorable villains I’ve ever read, a truly difficult feat for an author to accomplish.
Bottom line: this is a fun, intensely interesting and fast-paced novel, but a definite fork in the road for fans of romance and romantic suspense.
Grade: B+
Book Type: Suspense
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 06/05/01
Publication Date: 2002
Related Reviews
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.