Sandra Brown is moving back to the 1990's

Tough Customer

Sandra Brown

Ah, there is the Sandra Brown I know and love! After a love-hate relationship with some of Brown's more recent romantic suspense (love that Brown was the author but hate the crap she was writing), I feel like she has returned to her former glory with Tough Customer.

Dodge Hanley is a private investigator in Georgia; he lives alone, has no close friends, toes the line of the law to get his job done, and smoke constantly. But his isolated world is penetrated when he gets a call from Caroline King with a desperate plea for him to come to Texas to help their daughter, who finds herself the object of a stalkers unwanted attention, and the stalker has begun a sequence of escalating criminal events. Dodge hasn't seen or spoken to Caroline and Berry for 30 years, since the day Berry was born and he walked out of their lives, but he finds himself unable to say no. Dodge heads to Texas and works with the local Deputy, Ski Nyland, to find the stalker and keep Berry safe....but emotions that had been long buried begin to rise to the surface.

Tough Customer tells two alternating stories: the present story of Berry and her stalker, and the 30 year old story of how Caroline and Dodge found and subsequently lost each other. Brown did a great job of weaving the two stories together; they each had intrigue and emotion that left you anxious to get to the next part to see what happens. The present story was the more prominent one and it was full of twists and turns and something off about the stalker's actions that you just couldn't put your finger on - it was great! Throw in the additional personal development of the characters and a little smoldering attraction, and Brown re-found the recipe for a romantic suspense novel that I can't put down.

Miss the Sandra Brown of the 1990's? Pick up Tough Customer, throw on your hyper color t-shirt, put on some Spice Girls background music and relive some of the higher (?) points of the 90's.