Deadly Heat is the second installment in Cynthia Eden’s Deadly series, and here’s the thing you need to know about it. It has amazingly powerful, resilient and intelligent heroines, strong, supportive heroes, and really sadistic, evil villains. A romantic suspense should always be romantic, that’s a given. However, when the suspense is just as hot and just as dynamic as the romance, well then you have a winning combination. Cynthia Eden delivers on all counts.
In Deadly Heat we meet Lora Spade, a seasoned firefighter who has saved many lives but has also lost loved ones to the heat and blaze. She’s good at her job and takes it very seriously. When a serial arsonist takes up residence in her hometown of Charlottesville, VA she takes it personally. Her lover, also a firefighter, died in one of those fires. Taking matters into her own hands she calls in the SSD, the Special Services Division of the FBI, to help catch the arsonist. However Lora never expected that the man she pulls out of the next burning building is Kenton Lake, the SSD agent sent to investigate.
Kenton’s job is to profile and catch this serial killer. Not an easy task when the arsonist doesn’t follow any predictable patterns. He’s a ghost and a mystery, and for all that, he’s still very, very deadly. The sparks that sizzle between Kenton and Lora are powerful and undeniable. Together they must use all their knowledge and experience to catch a sadistic psycho whose one pleasure in life is to see the flames engulf every living thing he deems unfit to live. His methodical yet maniacal approach to killing is written so you can feel the heat and smell the burn.
Ms. Eden has done her research, and it is evident in the way she writes each scene. When she’s writing about the fire, you not only get the arsonist’s and the firefighter’s perspective but you also get the fire’s perspective. You get the sense of the fire as a living, breathing, deadly thing that burns and eats everything in its path. It’s written to give you a real sense of what it is like to be in the midst of such a terrifying experience. The same holds true as she describes the detailed and disciplined search the SSD performs as they try to find the arsonist before he strikes next.
Although this book definitely stands alone, the hero Kenton finds he needs the help of his friends and fellow SSD agents to catch the arsonist. So for those of you who have read the first book in the series, Deadly Fear, we get to visit with Monica, Luke, Hyde and Samantha. They are an integral part of this book and it’s great to see the way Ms. Eden is able to make each book stand alone yet build upon previous characters and their experiences. Not easy to do, but done well here. I’m hoping to see more of them in her next book, Deadly Lies.
