Hook - Hardcover

C.J. Songer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0709067585 ISBN 13: 9780709067580

Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

Define loyalty.

Meg Gillis used to be a cop, and if there's one thing she'd tell you, it's that loyalty doesn't break into nice easy terms. You choose your moment and you take your stand and you hope you come down on the side of the angels.

How far do you go for a friend?

It's a tough question.

In Meg's case, where the friend is Mike Johnson, she'll go pretty far. She worked with Mike in their cop days; they have quite a bond. He's her partner in a security company they're running on the edges of Beverly Hills.

Mike likes the ladies.

That's not a crime.

Meg generally ignores it -- he's a big boy and it's none of her business; everyone has a weakness -- but this time, she finds herself getting involved. It seems his lady friend's married and she's been abused. Meg doesn't care much for guys who beat up their wives, so she's willing to serve the divorce papers -- she insists on it, actually, because she can tell Mike wants to deliver them personally, and, if push comes to shove. Meg feels that she can avoid trouble with the abusive husband better than Mike could. It isn't about vigilantism, it's about common sense, letting the courts decide.

It's all very simple.

Except that, okay, it isn't that simple -- Mike doesn't want her to do it, and the new man in Meg's life would be ticked if he knew, but how hard could the job really be? It's not like she's never faced bad guys before -- she used to work Vice undercover. Mike's worried? Not a problem. She'll go in disguise.

She hadn't planned, perhaps, on how it would feel to dress up again, to use some of her moves. She sure hadn't planned on being face-to-face with the husband for more than a moment or getting hooked in herself.

Something happens that turns the whole deal upside down.

Define loyalty when everything you've believed is swept sideways.

How far would you go then?

Which direction?

Someone's following Meg, coming after her, and there is no safe harbor, she can't bring trouble home. She's cut herself off from Mike and from her lover. The police want to talk to her but Meg's running wild. She's taking her old skills -- her cop skills -- and applying them her way.

"By hook or by crook..."

Either Meg's losing it or she's finding a killer -- which side are the angels on now?

Written with cutting-edge authenticity by an author whose life takes her into the worlds of cops and firearms, Hook confirms the talent of one of the freshest new voices in crime-writing fiction.

About this title

Review:

Penzler Pick, May 2000: C.J. Songer has real-life experience as a California cop, a fact that goes a long way toward burnishing the hard sheen of tough reality one finds in her Meg Gillis novels. Bait was the first, and its follow-up, Hook, grabs again (excuse the pun) from the first sentence, with the savvy immediacy of Meg's narrative voice: "'So her husband slapped her around some?' I asked. 'This guy, what's-his-name, De la Pena?'" Meg's running a private security firm with a partner, Mike Johnson, and since both of them are ex-police force types, they know the drill. If Mike has become personally involved with a client who has a violent husband, it's no time to play Archie Goodwin, handling it on his own like some fictional knight errant.

Her partner is stubborn, so Meg winds up confused, especially because when she agrees to confront the seemingly guilty spouse and serve him the divorce papers, she finds a disturbingly attractive guy whose denials she finds convincing. The real problems begin, however, when he turns up dead and Meg becomes a suspect. It doesn't matter that there's a very nasty, very blond bad guy stalking her, or that Mrs. De la Pena is undoubtedly a serial liar; before it's all over, Meg is shot at, shadowed, slashed, and finally grateful for the protection of her overprotective admirer/nemesis, Reilly of the Beverly Hills Police Department, who insists on looking after her 24 hours a day.

In the best trouble-a-minute, smart-alecky style, Songer whisks Meg through hot spots and chilling moments alike with equal skill. What feels different here about a familiar formula is that Meg, Mike, Reilly, and even the villains and lesser characters don't seem like caricatures. There's an easy, natural rhythm to it all, a style and pace that make for the best kind of mystery fiction. --Otto Penzler

About the Author:

C. J. Songer worked for several years with the Glendale, California, Police Department and is married to a former robbery/homicide investigator for the same department. Versed in weapons and self-defense, she's taken classes at Gunsite, "the Harvard of shooting schools," in Arizona; Thunder Ranch in Texas; and FrontSight in California, She's had training with current and ex-Navy SEALs, and has shot, by invitation, at tactical matched where street survival skills are measured. She is now in training in Krav Maga, the Israeli branchof martial arts. Bait is her first novel. She lives in southern California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0709067585
• ISBN 13: 9780709067580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272