Thursday, April 9, 2015

review || THE KILL SHOT { jamie sinclair book blast }


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Ebook Copies of THE KILL LIST & THE KILL SHOT







The Kill List: Jamie Sinclair # 1
Released: December 2, 2014

In this taut debut thriller, Nichole Christoff introduces a savvy private investigator with nerves of steel—and a shattered heart.

As a top private eye turned security specialist, Jamie Sinclair has worked hard to put her broken marriage behind her. But when her lying, cheating ex-husband, army colonel Tim Thorp, calls with the news that his three-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, he begs Jamie to come find her. For the sake of the child, Jamie knows she can’t refuse. Now, despite the past, she’ll do everything in her power to bring little Brooke Thorp home alive.

Soon Jamie is back at Fort Leeds—the army base in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens where she grew up, the only child of a two-star general—chasing down leads and forging an uneasy alliance with the stern military police commander and the exacting FBI agent working Brooke’s case. But because Jamie’s father is now a U.S. senator, her recent run-in with a disturbed stalker is all over the news, and when she starts receiving gruesome threats echoing the stalker’s last words, she can’t shake the feeling that her investigation may be about more than a missing girl—and that someone very powerful is hiding something very significant . . . and very sinister.



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The Kill Shot: Jamie Sinclair # 2
Released: March 17th, 2015

In an explosive thriller for readers of Lee Child, Alex Berenson, and Brad Taylor, P.I. and security specialist Jamie Sinclair finds herself caught in a dangerous game of international cat-and-mouse.

Jamie Sinclair’s father has never asked her for a favor in her life. The former two-star general turned senator is more in the habit of giving his only child orders. So when he requests Jamie’s expertise as a security specialist, she can’t refuse—even though it means slamming the brakes on her burgeoning relationship with military police officer Adam Barrett. Just like that, Jamie hops aboard a flight to London with a U.S. State Department courier carrying a diplomatic pouch in an iron grip.

Jamie doesn’t have to wait long to put her unique skills to good use. When she and the courier are jumped by goons outside the Heathrow terminal, Jamie fights them off—but the incident puts her on high alert. Someone’s willing to kill for the contents of the bag. Then a would-be assassin opens fire in crowded Covent Garden, and Jamie is stunned to spot a familiar face: Adam Barrett, who saves her life with a single shot and calmly slips away. Jamie’s head—and her heart—tell her that something is very wrong. But she’s come way too far to turn back now.


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Nichole Christoff is a writer, broadcaster, and military spouse who has worked on air and behind the scenes producing and promoting content for radio, television news, and the public relations industry across the United States and Canada. Christoff is a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime and the Jane Austen Society of North America. She also belongs to Private Eye Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and three of RWA’s local chapters where she’s served as an officer and a member of the board. 

In Christoff’s first year as a member of RWA, her first manuscript won the Golden Heart for Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements. Her second manuscript won a Helen McCloy Scholarship from Mystery Writers of America. Her last manuscript was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. Her latest novel, The Kill Shot, is a 2014 Killer Nashville Claymore Dagger finalist.


{ review } .
The Kill Shot
Rating: ★★★1/2
Stephanie Plum and Eve Dallas, meet Jamie Sinclaire.

This book felt and read very much like the Plum and In Death series'. It was kind of an 'in the middle' type of read, maybe more In Death than Plum (in terms of serious versus comical).

Jamie does protection/rescue detail, and at the urging of her father, she ends up in the UK. She is to keep a girl named Katie safe as she's traveling, more or less.

Through the ins and outs of this story, you see Jamie doing what she does best -- protection, evade, escape. You see her battle emotions with a certain Adam Barrett, but then with her friend Philip. Barrett is Military Police and is out of the country often on assignment, and her friend Philip lives over in the UK.

Nichole did a really great job of writing the suspense aspect. I liked watching Jamie battle with her emotions and desires -- she's a divorcee and is finding her way back in the emotional pool. However, the romance aspect is not the forefront of this novel.

...but being the reader that I am, those were the parts that kept me wanting more. I wanted to see more Barrett/Jamie interaction. I found that when they were together, everything was real and truthful. The touches, the comments, the looks. I just loved them together.

I especially loved that in her world of men who keep things from her, regardless of her occupation, Barrett shared with her (what he could). Sure, parts of his job had to be kept under wraps, but when things concerned her or would somehow effect her, he didn't cajole, or hide, or lie... he told her.

People lied to private investigators all the time. Even some of my clients bent the truth when talking with me. They usually called it tact, but really, those fibs were rarely tactful. And then there was my father. For him, the truth—and the withholding of truth—were just two more weapons in his arsenal.
 
But Barrett laid his weapons down every time he came to me.
And that, I was finding, meant I didn’t need defenses.

This was a story of twists and turns. The plot was always moving and keeping the reader on her (/his?) toes. But while, yes, there were more serious aspects than any other, I did enjoy the brief moments of comedy:

[Barrett] "You’d better come see this.”
I wasn’t going to come see anything. Not while I was stark naked and soaking wet.

At some point, Plum and Dallas fell off my radar. I'm going to make it a point to keep Jamie Sinclair on it.


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