KNIFE IN THE BACK by Karen Rose

5* I thought this would have a lot of a shrinking female lead, but wow, there were a bunch of kick butt women in this!!

Thank goodness this isn't a Mills and Boon type of romsusp where the feisty but ultimately needy female lead goes all soft and mushy. Despite a brief moment where Naomi has an understandable moment of 'what if I...', she was the strong and silent female lead type. As were most the women in this tale, each in their organic role. 

Burke wasn't an uptight alpha male, didn't posture or parade or spout stuff just for the sake of it, but he got his head out of his butt - with a little help from a woman - and got to work. Of course, it helped that he was built, loaded, an ex-forces type, but he had no toxic masculinity, it seemed. Nor did the other males in the tale. Everett, Naomi's son, had to be given the plain hard truth before he got his head out of his butt, but he got a pass due to his age. 

The tale was very well done, with the reason Naomi got victimised not coming out until the very end. Said reason was plausible, if a bit not-bigged-up enough, but I just wish she'd had her eureka! moment a bit sooner. 

The romance wasn't at all prominent and the leads didn't absolutely have to find a place and time for sex whilst in the midst of danger. Thank goodness. They thought with their actual heads. The tale was barely a romsusp in my book, no pun intended, and could've worked without the tiny bit of chemistry between the leads. What it was, was a horrible tale of very believable events, corrupt LEO types, and all too true forms of the darkness that exists in our western world. 

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Headline, for my reading pleasure. 

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