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Special Agent Leo Reeves is new to the FBI’s LA field office. His career has been on track since the day he joined the bureau. He loves his job as a profiler, and being assigned to a new team in one of the busiest offices in the nation will be the opportunity of a lifetime…if he can put the past behind him. The face Leo shows the world is strong, focused, dependable, and capable. The long list of citations in his file only serve to prove how good he is.
If he could only forget he was sired by a monster.
Former marine staff sergeant Max Prince leads by example. Whether it means protecting men in battle, working for the US marshal service, or being the best damn field agent the FBI has ever seen, he brings a special kind of bravery to the job. His teammates depend on his ready smiles and his funny jokes and know him as the excellent agent he’s proven to be. They never see the man who buried his heart eight years ago.
The last thing he wants is to fall for the new guy.
When a serial killer suddenly starts targeting innocents, both men have trouble pinning down who they’re dealing with. With victimology all over the place, Leo can’t make sense of a profile, and Max simply wants to put the bastard away before he murders anyone else. The case is maddening, but worse, the attraction the two men find every time they look at each other is beginning to get in the way. 
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What can I say about this book?
First, the action and suspense were all done very well. It was obviously well researched and plotted out. And even though we don’t get a full resolution, there is the beginning of one.
However, this book could have easily been about 1/3 shorter, and gotten the same amount of story across. There was a large excess of, while not fluff, unnecessary verbiage. In almost every new location, every single detail was laid out for the reader. The color of the sofa, along with the type of material, etc. It was too much. It was a perfect example of forgetting to “show, not tell”.
It was the same with the characters. The reader received so much information on the characters that entered the scene, their height, eye color, hair color, skin color, etc that it was too much. It all washed into the background. In addition, there were SO MANY times that the new character(s) to the scene were described as beautiful, gorgeous, best looking, etc. It was complete overkill.
And not to pile on, but maybe not 600 characters in one book. I exaggerate, but only a little. There were A LOT of characters to keep track of. (One major character in one scene, I can’t figure out why he was introduced at all. Maybe it will make sense in a second book?) It was impossible. Many were from what I was able to glean, a different series. As this is book 1, it should read as a book 1, and not a continuation of the other series.
The narrator, Michael Dean, was usual did a great job of keeping the characters distinct, which wasn’t easy with different accents, multiple characters, and different first languages.
If you are a fan of this author’s books, you will likely love this one. There’s a lot going on, but the action and suspense flows well. There’s just too much other stuff that I felt got in the way of telling the actual story that the author was intending to tell. I’m going to give book 2 a shot to see if it fares better for me.
2 pieces of eye candy
