The Unsung Hero

June 5, 2000
Four plot lines are expertly interwoven to create a love story-cum-thriller in the latest work by veteran romance author Brockmann (Bodyguard), winner of two Romantic Times Career Achievement Awards and a two-time RITA finalist. Navy SEAL Lt. Tom Paoletti, on medical leave after a near-fatal head injury, returns to his New England hometown and is drawn into an unresolved relationship with the girl he left behind. Kelly Ashton, now a pediatrician, is caring for her dying father when Tom returns to disrupt--and enrich--her life. Then Tom glimpses a terrorist he once pursued who's supposed to be dead, but his antagonistic superiors attribute the unlikely sighting to his head injury. Brockmann keeps the tension high, while also revealing the heartbreaking wartime secret shared by Kelly's father and Tom's beloved uncle. Another subplot involving Tom's niece also plays nicely into the dramatic finale as Tom and a makeshift team must take on terrorist bombers unaided. With its shift in focus from romance to the action subplot, this novel would make a terrific movie.

Starred review from August 1, 2016

Brockmann's Troubleshooters are just that: a close-knit group of ex-Navy SEALs who form their own makeshift counterterrorist team to tackle the problems that the U.S. government can't or won't handle--because those troubles are much too close to home. As the series continued, the stories branched out to include veterans from other services and took on more domestic problems such as gangs and drugs but always with the same pulse-pounding adventure and romantic heat. Although "Troubleshooters" seems to have concluded with Free Fall, Brockmann has returned to more military-grade action in her spin-off "Reluctant Heroes," starting with Do or Die (LJ 2/15/14).

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