Genre:
Thriller
Description:
“She was
a dangerous man's lover…now she's his dangerous enemy.
For Kate
Jones, being on the run from her former lover—the vicious leader of
a Mexican drug cartel—was never going to be easy. But with a new
identity, a new lover, and a new life in northern Arizona, she was
beginning to believe she'd made it through the worst.
Then, in an
act of twisted revenge, Kate's kidnapped and imprisoned by her deadly
enemy, his intention to force her to pay back the money she stole
before he kills her.”
Author:
“The
author of two bestselling thriller series featuring strong female
protagonists, Berkom grew up on a steady diet of spy novels, James
Bond movies and mysteries. Her natural inclination is to keep the
reader on the edge of their seat and guessing until the last page.
Raised in
the Midwest, she received her BA in Political Science from the
University of Minnesota and promptly moved to Mexico to live on a
sailboat. Several years and at least a dozen moves later, she now
lives outside of Seattle, Washington with her sweetheart Mark, an
ex-chef-turned-contractor, and writes whenever she gets a chance.”
For more,
visit her website.
Appraisal:
I enjoy
books with kick-ass female protagonists and Kate Jones fits the bill
perfectly. When the going gets tough, she keeps going. Yucatan
Dead ratchets up the tension
from the start as Kate deals with hit women, warring Mexican drug
cartels, and unofficial paramilitary organizations. Survival is never
a given.
However,
what stuck out for me, even more than Kate’s kick-assed-ness (yeah,
sometimes I make up words, I wonder if this will get past Amazon’s
censors) is the sense of humor, often in the descriptions. I found
myself laughing, even as I was on the edge of my seat, wondering what
would happen next. This isn’t typical of a thriller and I’m not
sure many authors could pull it off, but Berkom does. One example was
explaining that “Kidnappers R Us wasn't known for their customer
service.” Another was this description which was just over the top
enough to get a chuckle from me:
A rusty
metal bunk squatted against the right side of the tent, its sheet
stretched tight across the top and tucked under the mattress with
precision. Try bouncing a quarter off of that and it'd end up
embedded in the roof.
A fun read
and, for those just hearing about the Kate
Jones Thriller Series, one
with a healthy backlist to keep you in reading material for a while.
FYI:
Some adult
language and mild adult content.
Although Yucatan Dead is the sixth book of the Kate
Jones Thriller Series, what
back story was needed to understand Kate and the story was included here,
so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Reading this as a
standalone isn’t a problem.
Added
for Reprise Review: Yucatán
Dead was a nominee in the
Thriller category for B&P 2014 Readers' Choice Awards. Original
review ran September 6, 2013
Format/Typo
Issues:
No
significant issues.
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 60-65,000 words
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