DEADLY RECALL by Donnell Ann Bell_Review

Review of Deadly Recall by Donnell Ann Bell

5 stars

I reviewed a complimentary e-book copy provided by the author and publisher via NetGalley, in return for my fair and impartial review.

“Deadly Recall” is a thriller as much as it is romantic suspense, with a cast of characters who keep turning the screws of tension (and turning up the interpersonal heat level) while the protagonist, Eden Moran, suffers from traumatic amnesia, a condition which revolves around only one set of memories—but which has affected her entire life from age nine. Once a good student, and a prodigal piano artiste, one event—and the fact that she witnessed it, inadvertently, resulted in failing grades, expulsion from the parochial school, a lifetime of manipulation and disbelief from her controlling mother. Now she is an accomplished public defender for the City of Albuquerque, managing a lonely but successful life—until bones are discovered in the desert, in the excavation for yet another new shopping center.

Over the past couple of decades, scandal and trauma in the Roman Catholic Church has been exposed often, specifically child abuse. Author Donnell Ann Bell takes a new perspective to the Church, offering a priest who first seduces nuns, then murders; then gets a promotion. The sensuality is steaming but tasteful, and the romantic tension and push-me/pull-you emotions between the detective and the public defender are delightful, sure to appeal to readers who love romantic suspense which has both the qualities of romance and of suspense.