Freefall by Joann Ross ***

My first experience with author Joann Ross was a Louisiana bayou series (Blue Bayou and the Callahan Brothers) and I liked them. However, I didn't read any more by her until a new release came up, I believe it was #3 or #4 in a series, and it sounded good. I got the new release but never read it as I prefer to read series in order and I was moving and...

I downloaded Freefall, the #1 in this series, from audible.com and finally got around to listening to it this weekend. It was pretty good and maybe I'll get around to reading or listening to the rest of them, eventually.

This is the High Risk series, and Freefall's hero is a Navy SEAL (surprise, surprise) who left the service and is picking up the pieces of his life after a particularly bad clusterfuck in Afghanistan where most of his team - not just a SEAL team, but Rangers and Marines too - were killed. Zach's back in his hometown of Swann Island, South Carolina.

Our lovely heroine is also a quasi-resident, or former resident of Swann Island - Sabrina Swann, as it happens. Her father and mother were artsy types who traveled the world, leaving Sabrina in hotels and boarding schools all over Europe, and her grandmother's home on Swann Island, Swannsea (spelling?) is really the only place she considered home. She spent a few summers there, and during her pivotal teen years had the biggest crush on Zach. She had a terrific job, running a fabulous hotel in Florence, Italy, when BOOM a terrorist blows up the hotel, and Sabrina decides to take a hiatus and return to her roots to recover mentally. Unfortunately, her grandmother died a few months earlier and Sabrina comes back to take care of the estate.

In the midst of all this, some unnamed horrible serial killer is keeping young women caged somewhere and after treating them as slaves, murders them and moves on to the next one.

There's a secondary romance going on - best friends both to each other growing up and to Zach and Sabrina, Tatiana and Nate (he's former Marine and the sheriff now) are an ongoing romance during the story. Some of these plot points were so incredibly similar to a book I'm reading on my iPhone/kindle and another book I just read that I kept getting confused - the new sheriff being the son of the old sheriff, SEALS, girls being raised by grandmothers, all that!!

Frankly, I think authors should be more careful about names in their stories - Zach, Nate, Quinn, John - those names all ran together in my head, and I spent a fair amount of time wondering which was which while I listened. You can't really reference back during audio books to see which character said what.

It's a murder mystery background to a finding-love-again romance foreground. There's immediate chemistry between Zach and Sabrina, now that she's no longer jailbait. He's the contractor working on her grandmother's historical old home, and there's that SEAL thing going on, and his best friend the sheriff is involved, and, well, they find peace, love and the killer at the end.

The narrator was ok - she did voices well, and managed to get a different voice going for each character, but she did have an odd quirk or 2 that kept her from really being great. For one thing, those syrupy southern accents on everyone tired me out after a while. Everyone except of course Sabrina who did not grow up around there. The narrator, in my opinion, needed to stop emphasizing the letter T so much and to enunciate her vowels a little better. The words "during" and "enduring" sounded like "doring" and "endoring", as a fer instance. Those things can really mess up a good story for me - the narrator can make an OK book fabulous and a fabulous book just OK. That being said, I think the book was probably just OK even if Barbara Rosenblat had read it to me. Somehow that old hack of bringing in a second characer with murder on his mind to confuse you about who the real murderer wasn't very refreshing. The minute that fellow's motive was revealed, it was obvious he wasn't the serial killer, but just another character out for revenge.

So *** three stars for a much-used plot, much-used characters, confusing names and an OK narrator.

Magnolia Moon by JoAnn Ross *****

This is the 3rd story in the Callahan Brothers Trilogy, and it's the story of Nate Callahan, the youngest of the 3 brothers from Blue Bayou, Louisiana.

Nate's been the stay-at-home guy all along. While older brothers Jack and Finn played cops and robbers as kids, Nate was dragging wood out of the bayou - he likes to say it was so he could build the jail for those robbers. He was athletic too, and went as far away as Tulane (my alma mater!) on an athletic scholarship, but came home to take care of his mother as she died from cancer and never left. Of course, Tulane was only in New Orleans, so he didn't go far.

Now he's the mayor of Blue Bayou - it's a volunteer position, so he supports himself with his contracting business. He's a natural politician and diplomat - always had a way with the ladies, as long as they don't start thinking about flatware patterns and picket fences. No, marriage might have tripped up brothers Jack and Finn, but not Nate. That is, not until he met Regan.

Regan's a hard case - she's a homicide cop in L.A. That's Los Angeles, not Louisiana. She's all business, no nonsense and no play, just like his big brother Finn. When Nate shows up in the L.A. homicide office, she's also all suspicion. She worked with Finn a few years back, so she tries to remain open minded about Nate's visit - but she doesn't buy his story: he ran across some cold case evidence of a possible murder in Blue Bayou some 30 years ago. The victim had a 2 year old child named Regan, and it's no coincidence when the pieces of the puzzle come together: he thinks she's the daughter of the victim. But that doesn't fit her life because she had a mother, who died 2 years ago, who raised her in California as a single mother after her father died in Vietnam. However, there is mention of a toy elephant that is suspiciously similar to the one she still has...

It takes a while for Regan to get curious enough to follow the evidence to Blue Bayou and check it out for herself. Being a small town, there are still a folks around who remember Linda Dale, the nightclub singer who died from carbon monoxide poisoning, a probable suicide. But Linda's diary indicates there was more to the story - no depression, no suicidal thoughts, so what really happened, both to Linda and to little Regan?

On Regan's first day in town, however, Nate deputizes her to help out with a train/truck wreck where they pull out a runaway teen with an attitude, Josh. After that, rumor has it Regan is there for the sheriff's position, vacated in book 1 when the sheriff got put away for conspiracies and other criminal activities.

The story lets Regan take her time getting to know the Blue Bayou inhabitants and learn some of the mystique and appeal of small town living. I personally can vouch for the mystique and cannot say for sure whether or not it's different in south Louisiana, but I think it is. She also gets introduced to Mardi Gras Blue Bayou style - Mardi Gras is an institution down there, for sure. (For the uninitiated, Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, which is what it's called in the book, and it's the day before Lent.)

Meanwhile she takes her time getting acclimated to Nate as well. She finds him interesting, but she doesn't see any future there, what with her having this career in L.A. and all. There's an attraction on his part too - hell, he's a true ladies' man and he's not dead - but Nate makes it clear he's not looking for any commitment, especially one involving flatware. Ha.

I do love stories where the man caves first, and hard.

Once again, I was left with that grin on my face and the afterglow of a good story at the end. OK, the whole Josh-the-runaway-teen thing wrapped up a little too easily and left me scratching my head on the details, almost as if the author thought, oh wait we have to let the readers know how Josh's background played out.

There's a bit of suspense in solving the mystery of Linda's death, too, although it's clear Regan is definitely the little girl, but the main focus of this book is the developing romance. I found it credible and romantic, and the end is truly sigh-worthy - 5 stars.

River Road by JoAnn Ross *****

This is story #2 in the Callahan Brothers Trilogy which takes place in fictional Blue Bayou, Louisiana, deep in southern bayou, swamp and Cajun territory. The story involves the eldest Callahan brother, Finn, an FBI Special Agent who has been hunting a heinous serial killer for over 2 years. The killer was finally caught and behind bars. As the story starts, we learn the killer attempted to escape, and Finn nearly killed him, beating him to a pulp after preventing the escape.

Finn's a big tough bad good guy - I liked the author's description of him as being a young Tommy Lee Jones mixed with the Hulk. (Of course, I knew she meant Jones' onscreen persona, the tough, hard case.) He's by the book, well, except for beating up that serial killer. And his superior officer, a woman who bows to political pressure, has just given him an unpaid leave of absence over that little incident. Grrrr.

He heads back to Blue Bayou, where younger brother Nate asks him to do Blue Bayou a rather big favor. It seems the actors and crew of the popular soap opera River Road are coming to film the big season finale in brother Jack's home, Beau Soleil, and one of the female stars, Julia Summers, needs a bodyguard. Apparently she's been receiving stalker-ish notes, and the last one was slightly threatening.

Julia is the daughter of a couple of hippies (think Dharma's folks in Dharma and Greg). She was raised on a commune, and she carries stones that her mother swears have powers - so she hasn't grown up to be the opposite of them at all. In fact, when she makes Finn for the FBI agent he is, she's pretty ticked off - he's the very embodiment of what she's been raised to believe are the bad guys, pigs, authority figures, who arrested and harrassed her folks at every turn.

Ah, the old "opposites attract" story! Actually, yes, and Ross makes it work! Finn isn't too thrilled to take on this assignment either, but Nate sorta blackmails him by letting him know the show will move to another location, and Blue Bayou will lose out on the money the show will bring to town. Finn assumes she's like her character, Amanda, on the show - a conniving, sexually-loose woman who will do anything to get ahead, and she strengthens that by taking on that persona after they meet. Julia assumes he's hard-assed, by the book... (oh wait, he sorta is) Sparks fly, but he sticks around - 24/7 - a combination that can really only lead to disaster - or attraction.

There's a suspense element with both the stalker and the serial killer still out there. I was actually surprised by the revealing of the stalker, especially since Ross does a little redirection thing that caught me unawares. And the serial killer escapes again...

The writing on this was a little different from Blue Bayou - for one thing, I didn't feel slapped in the face with the overabundance of similes that had me rolling my eyes in that story. Also there was a lot more humor, and I found myself chuckling several times. Every time I did, I wondered if I should mark the line to include in a review, but somehow it all seemed so contextual, sorta like "you had to be there" to get the humor. It wasn't really comedy or funny situations, it was things that came across as real, and wry, and just made me smile in agreement. I saved this one quote as an example, but I have to lead into it. He's finally cracked that granite exterior, at the end, and this isn't really a spoiler since it is a Romance, after all, so you know he's going to admit he loves her. He's actually groveling a little, and he's mentioned having kids, to which she is agreeable.

"Good. Because I want to get them a big stupid dog who'll shed all over and chew up your scripts."

I dunno, maybe you had to be there, but I found that line incredibly goofy and romantic and so not-Finn that it made me laugh out loud.

This one gets a 5 star rating from me!

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Not to ruin a good rating, but I do have one, sorta minor, quibble. Near the end, on the last day of shooting, there's the scene where we learn the identity of the stalker. Not to give too much away, but that must have been the longest day in history - first they shoot the final scene, then It Happens where Julia, uh, goes missing, then We Find Julia and Bring Her Back To Beau Soleil (and I'm thinking, there must have been some time spent with the police?), and it is mentioned that the sun is going down

THEN after that we have the stalker incident Where The Stalker's Identity Is Revealed and Guns Are Involved,

THEN Finn and Jack drive the stalker, handcuffed, to Baton Rouge...

Now, if that wasn't the longest day ever, while Finn and Jack are off on their roundtrip to Baton Rouge, which I figure has to be 3-4 hours minimum, since surely they have to explain some things to the authorities there, and BR must be a good 60-90 minute drive away, Julia is getting ready for Finn to take her on a date to New Orleans when he returns.

What? When she left Where She Was (before We Find Her and Bring Her Back To Beau Soleil), the sun was already going down. It must be after midnight by now! And after the day she's had, she's going dancing in New Orleans?

I might have to re-read the scene because surely he didn't expect her to get dressed up and go dancing after What Happened?? (How's that for not giving anything away?) And they did not go dancing cuz after Jack and Finn return from BR, There Is Another Incident Involving Guns and Knives. Whew. Long Day.

Blue Bayou by JoAnn Ross ****

This is the first of a trilogy in a 3fer book I just got at Hastings new. I had the 3 books on my PBS reminder list because someone had posted positively about them. I was also interested in them because they take place in south Louisiana, which is where I spent my formative years (ages 2-15).

My father likes to say, in reference to his being transferred to south Louisiana in the late 50s, that it was his first foreign post. (We went on to live in south and central America.) Since I was pretty young when we moved from Texas, where my ancestors had been since the mid-19th century, I didn't have much to compare to at the time. I can now say, in all confidence, he had a good point - south Louisiana isn't like anywhere else, and that's for sure.

I'm pleased to say the author did manage to get the Cajun patois and the sense of living on the bayou pretty much right, if my own memory serves. I do have one minor quibble about her initial references to seeing weather "over the Gulf" because I'm not sure there's anyplace you can live in a plantation home, on the bayou, and also see the actual Gulf of Mexico. Even the geography of Louisiana is different from any other state - it's not long stretches of beach like Mississippi or Texas, but bayous and swamps draining into the river delta. Ok, minor quibble, it's just that I tried to imagine the setting and couldn't make the Gulf come into play.

But I do remember pirogues and people speaking English with French influence ("me, I'm gonna pass by the store"). It was all a mystery to me then why people talked so funny.

The author also slipped in a couple of French phrases I had to scratch my head about - I'm no French expert but I usually can read Cajun and French phrases in books with my limited French and Cajun background. Again, minor quibbles, but those are the kinds of things that jerk me out of stories, like some grammar mistakes and typos (see previous post).

In this story, Jack Callahan is of Cajun and Irish descent, and grew up in Blue Bayou as a sort of juvenile delinquent. Judge Dupree, a tough but fair fellow, sent Jack to juvenile detention to get him straightened out, and it apparently worked well enough. Jack learned a lot in his stay there and at age 18, had plans for a better future. Unfortunately, the judge's willful 17-year-old daughter Danielle had other plans for Jack and managed to convince him to act on their mutual chemistry, with some unplanned results. When Jack and Dani were discovered in the act by the local sheriff, the judge steps in and changes the course of both their lives, a sort of evil Gepetto.

First the judge convinces Jack to leave the parish for good by threatening to fire Jack's widowed mother, who is the judge's housekeeper. Soon after, when Dani reveals her pregnancy, he sends her to a home for unwed mothers, where he forces her to give up her child for adoption, except the infant dies. Then the judge arranges for Dani to marry an up and coming young politician, and move to Washington D.C. The fellow turns out to be a philandering good-for-nothing, leaves her (and their young son) for another woman and then is killed in a freak accident.

It's 13 years after Jack and Dani parted. Jack has returned to Blue Bayou after being an undercover DEA agent and is now a bestselling author. He managed to buy the Dupree family home, Beau Soleil, and is renovating it. But his past still haunts him.

After her husband's death, Dani and her son Matt have nothing - he managed to clean out their bank accounts and leave them with a pile of debt. She packs up what is left and heads back to Blue Bayou, thinking to introduce Matt to his grandfather and try to start her life over again. The plan includes picking the judge up when he's released from Angola where he's serving a 7 year sentence for bribery.

The story revolves around Dani and Jack having to resolve their differences, reveal their pasts and come to grips with the still-existing strong chemistry between them. By the way, if Big Mis/Secret Baby plots annoy you, skip this one, because it's key.

I enjoyed the story, mostly, although I did find Ms Ross uses an awful lot of similes, almost to the point where you wish she would just stick in a plain adjective or maybe just say what she means. Blood blossoming like a field of scarlet poppies. Eyes as red-veined as a Louisiana road map. Memories lingered like bits of Spanish moss clinging to a long-dead cypress. Maybe it's like spice - the right amount enhances the flavor, and, well, you go ahead and figure out your own simile for using too much spice, ok? Me, I think she used a tetch too much.

In all, I rank it 4 stars in my personal rating system. Plus, as a bonus, it fits a category in the Fall 2008 Reading Challenge, a title with a place in the name - whoo hoo!