Blue Smoke and Murder

A combination of action, intrigue, and sexual tension results in superb romantic suspense. Narrator Carol Monda delivers a confident performance as the independent Jill Breck, a river guide who is pulled into a dangerous scheme when she inherits a collection of unsigned canvases. As she tries to uncover the truth about the origin of the paintings, her life is threatened, and she must seek help from a private consulting firm. Monda's husky rendering of operative Zach Balfour adds to his masculine strength while keeping his tone caring and protective. Overall, Monda's performance keeps up with the fast pace of the action, yet she deftly slows things down for the steamy scenes when Jill and Zach act upon their mutual attraction. K.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

April 28, 2008
An art scandal enlivens this au-so-courant novel of romantic suspense from bestseller Lowell (Innocent as Sin
), set in various locales around the American Southwest. Zach Balfour, a sexy freelancer working for St. Kilda Consulting, a security firm, falls in love with an attractive client, wilderness expert Jill Breck, while investigating Jill's recent inheritance of unsigned paintings possibly done by the late Thomas Dunstan, a legendary Western painter who had been the hard-drinking lover of Jill's artist grandmother, Justine Breck. Jill—and the paintings—are at risk because some greedy art connoisseurs realize that new Dunstans might adversely affect the price of his works slated for an upcoming Vegas auction. Lowell's keen insights into art world shenanigans serve to remind the reader about the value of art for art's sake rather than art for money's sake.

June 1, 2008
A picture is worth a thousand words--and millions of dollars--in Lowells new romantic thriller. In the novels early pages, Arizona river-rafting guide Jill Breck saves the life of Lane Faroe, whose father runs St. Kilda Consulting, a powerful private security firm. Jills heart-stopping heroics earn the eternal gratitude of the elder Faroe, who promises her the services of his company should she ever get in a jam. So when her aunt perishes in a suspicious fire, Jill calls St. Kilda right away. (She suspects the blaze is connected to paintings kept hidden by her late eccentric mother, the sometime lover of legendary western landscape painter Thomas Dunstan.) Protection arrives in the form of sexy St. Kilda operative Zach Balfour, who teams with Jill to determine the provenance of the paintings. Though her plot is too contrived, Lowell (The Wrong Hostage, 2006) provides intriguing insight into the lucrative and fiercely competitive world of art collecting, where strokes of the brush can lead to brushes with death.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)