Mystery and mayhem galore, another good chapter in the Deadly series.

This last installment of the Francesca Cahill Deadly series may in fact be the final title in the unforgettable series. I have had the pleasure of reading several of the other books by Brenda Joyce and do recommend you read them, they are a treat. This one, however, brought home to me that I truly didn’t love all the characters nor the continuing love story. So, does that mean that I didn’t like the series? No. But it does mean that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I could have.

The deadly series is a continuing saga of the exploits of lady sleuth Francesca Cahill, a debutant in fashionable New York near the turn of the 20th century. The first few books have her solving murders and thefts along side the married police commissioner, Rick Bragg. Their romance blooms and cranks up the heat until Francesca meets Rick’s half-brother Calder Hart further in the series and the romance between Calder and Francesca steams up the pages. In this book, Francesca is set to marry Calder when a nude painting of her, one that is a plot item in a previous book, surfaces the day of her wedding. Francesca misses her wedding and Calder breaks the relationship off in his anger and grief. Francesca must find out who has her painting and get it back before she is ruined in the eyes of society. At the same time she must battle her lingering feelings for Rick and attempt to win Calder back. This is one complex plot with hints and plot lines from other books thrown into the mix. You don’t have to have read the other books to understand what is going on but, it will greatly help to clarify many key aspects of the book.

I had no serious issues with the plot; it moved at a good pace but was difficult to follow at times and the book ended with many things unresolved. I never approved of the romance between Rick and Francesca so it was nice to see that it appears to have been resolved once and for all in this book. I don’t like a married hero, no matter how estranged he is from his wife. I was never really able to “feel” it in the previous books where they are fit together. The romance with Calder was temperamental in the other books and it was no different in this one. However, I have decided that I don’t like their relationship or the power struggles they face. Calder can’t make up his mind if he is good enough for Francesca and calls off their wedding one too many times for me. I just didn’t feel connected to their romance or to them as characters.

Francesca is the independent type who is happy to grow up in a society that is becoming more and more open for women. I like her intelligence and attitude but I think she is way too smart for the likes of Calder Hart. He is not my idea of a hero other than his rakish past that just screams for a good woman to reform him. But he is insecure and a bit too emotionally unstable to be appealing as a hero. I have always liked Rick and wish that he was not married so that the relationship between him and Francesca could have developed. But, I don’t write the books and Brenda obviously has a winning method to her madness where this series is concerned.

The love scenes are heated even if they are more tame than you might expect.

Overall, I hope to see more of the Deadly series. This book was a good read and the mystery was a good one to solve. But, I wanted a more powerful romance and a more powerful hero and in terms of my merger demands, the book fell short.

Reviewed by: Danielle