Review - - Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage
Silent Warrior - Book One
(Digital Book)
By J.L. Saint
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Release Date: December 14, 2010







Death stalked the darkest hours before dawn, when innocents blissfully slept and even the depraved lowered their guard for a moment's respite.  

The first book in J.L. Saint’s new Silent Warrior series is a military romantic suspense thriller with enough heart-stopping action and heart-pounding passion to keep me riveted to the pages from beginning to end. I can’t wait to see what she has in store for us next!

The most danger Lauren Collins faces on a daily basis is breaking up squabbles between her five-year-old twin sons. Since her ex-husband left her eighteen months earlier for rotating flavors of the month, the single mom from Atlanta has devoted herself to her children, steering clear of men since it’s obvious that her two dogs are much better judges of character than she is, but that all changes on the boys’ birthday when a mysterious letter from her ex-husband arrives from Brazil. Thrust into the middle of a terrorist plot that could bring the world to war, this unassuming mom finds herself and her sons targeted by paid assassins, a wounded soldier she's not sure she should trust appears to be her only hope for survival and she wonders if she ever knew her ex-husband at all!

Wounded during a mission gone awry in Lebanon, Delta Force soldier, Jack Hunter is recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center when he’s shocked to see a photo of prominent Atlanta businessman, Bill Collins on television. The reports say Collins was killed in Brazil the night before but Jack knows he shot and killed Collins during a rescue mission gone awry in Lebanon two weeks earlier. The problem is Collins’ body disappeared from Lebanon, Jack’s memories of the mission are fuzzy and nobody else believes the businessman was really there. The facts don’t add up.  Jack leaves the hospital and heads for Atlanta to find the man’s wife but, instead of answers, he only finds more questions and a woman who brings his body, and heart, to life. But with more than one bad guy after them, will they live long enough to explore the attraction between them?  And, if they do survive, will Lauren ever be able to forgive him for taking the life of her sons' father?

Saint (who also writes as Jennifer St. Giles) wrote the proposal for this book prior to 9/11 but the story could be ripped from the headlines of the world in which we live today. An environmentalist discovers a “super fuel” then uses terrorist tactics to set nation against nation, hoping to bring about a world war that will see him emerging as the supreme power at the end. Using this as the basis of the story, Saint then brings the action down to a personal, intimate level by showing us what happens to ordinary people who are the collateral damage (impacted by) of the actions of others - a terrorist, the government, an ex-husband – and the extraordinary measures those people take to save themselves and the people they love. As Jack realizes toward the end of the book…

In one way or another Jack realized that everyone experienced collateral damage from the fallout of life. What determined the result was all in how a person viewed themselves and conquered the obstacles.

With Jack and Lauren, Saint has given us a courageous soldier who believes he has nothing to offer a woman in a relationship and an unassuming mom who finds a hidden well of strength and courage that she never imagined she had. (It isn’t hard to identify with a mom whose children are threatened.) She surrounds them with an intriguing cast of secondary characters that help propel the story without overshadowing the lead characters of this book but leave the reader excited about reading each of their stories. I’m looking forward to getting to know all of them better and am especially eager to learn more about Roger and Mari.

I’ve enjoyed previous offerings from Jennifer St. Giles but I really think she’s found her niche writing romantic suspense thrillers as J.L. Saint. I highly recommend this book!

~PJ

Today's Special - - JL Saint

We're delighted to welcome romantic suspense author, JL Saint to The Romance Dish today!  Some of you may say, "Wait a minute.  That looks like Jennifer St. Giles!"  You'd be right!  Award-winning Contemporary Paranormal and Gothic-Historical Paranormal author, Jennifer St. Giles also writes terrific romantic suspense thrillers under the name of JL Saint.  (I'm a huge fan of her Contemporary-Paranormal Shadowmen series and her new R/S thriller, Collateral Damage has me riveted to the pages.)  But that's not all this talented writer does.  Under the name of Jennifer Saints, she also writes contemporary "graphic" novels that include photos depicting scenes from the story.  She's one very busy lady!  When not writing, Jenni is a working nurse and mom to three kids and numerous pets.  Please give her a warm welcome!








A Recipe For a Romantic Thriller

 

One hunky capable hero willing to put everything on the line.
One tenacious heroine who will go to the ends of the earth to save her children.
One imaginative author who never gives up.
Nine years baking.

Nine years? Yes. I wrote the proposal for Collateral Damage in 2000. I set it ten years in the future and used the world’s dependency on oil and inflamed religious factions to bring about global chaos as the backdrop for the story. 9/11 happened and no one wanted to touch the story. Terrorists were too sensitive a subject, especially for a romance writer. A couple of years later, I became published in Historical romantic suspense (Gothics) and Paranormal Romantic Thrillers (The Shadowmen Series) and Collateral Damage sat on the shelf for nine years. But I couldn’t forget the story. The way the real world events kept playing out over the past decade kept shouting the “What if scenario” at me. So in 2009-10 I couldn’t put it off any longer and I wrote the story.

Collateral Damage is the first book in my Silent Warrior Series that features a military man or woman as the hero or heroine of the story. The first few books focus on a Delta Team whose mission to extract high profile hostages from a radical group in Lebanon turns into tragedy.

These books are not battlefield thrillers, but stories that place a military hero and his extraordinary skills
In Collateral Damage, “Jack who is recovering from serious injury in the hospital sees the picture of prominent American businessman, Bill Collins, on the news, who he swears he killed in Lebanon two weeks ago, but nobody believes him, especially since Collins reportedly died in Brazil just yesterday. Leaving the hospital, Jack goes AWOL to uncover the truth. Instead of answers, he gets assassins, more questions, and a terrorist plot that threatens to ignite a world war. As Jack fights to keep Lauren Collins, Bill’s estranged widow and her twin sons alive, he lays more than his life on the line and stands to lose everything when the truth behind Bill’s death comes to light.

When Lauren Collins learns her soon-to-be-ex’s deceit was more than just an affair or two, she and her sons were thrust into a world of peril where they become the target of irrational revenge and the focus of a serial murderer. One man, a wounded Delta soldier, steps between her family and danger and Lauren discovers there are men of honor. Jack puts his life on the line for her and her children, but can one man stop the onslaught against her? And if she and her children survive the Collateral Damage of Bill’s treason, can she trust Jack with her heart and those of her sons?”

So what do all of these ingredients make? One hot thriller with a delicious romance to fill your heart.

Ready for a taste…

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death…

Pink Floyd’s “Time” hammered through Sergeant First Class Jack Hunter’s brain as he tightened his grip on the treadmill and ran harder, his heart pounding, his lungs burning. Rage tinged with fear made for a potent Power Bar that fueled his drive. Sweat poured from his brow and his body screamed for relief, but he couldn’t stop. Not yet. His vision dimmed, and President Anderson’s address on the overhead TV calling for a swift but rational retaliation to al-Qaeda’s latest attack became nothing but a blur in his mind.

Life often hinged on the details, those seemingly insignificant microscopic events that most people trampled over obliviously. He’d trained to notice the details and to remember them. Yet no matter how hard he tried, his memory of the mission in Lebanon remained a kaleidoscope of combat images and one man’s mocking blue eyes…Jack clenched his teeth against the rising pain inside him. He took being team leader to heart both on and off the battlefield. The mission and his men were his responsibility. Rico, Pecos and Neil were his Delta brothers, and it killed him that he could only remember bits and pieces of what happened.

They’re here, DT. They’re alive! Will Taylor’s—aka Pecos—distorted voice echoed in Jack’s mind, sucking him down a long tunnel of fragmented memories… Suddenly Jack’s head jerked back as his headphones were snatched off and Lt. Col. Roger Weston, his Delta Team commander, whom the teams called Commander Weston because anything less didn’t fit his hard-edged charisma, got in his face. “Son of a bitch, DT. Are you trying to kill yourself?”

~Jlsaint.com

For your chance to win a free ARC of Collateral Damage, read the full excerpt at http://jenniferstgiles.com/content/bookshelf/collateral-damage/#more-87 and email how you think the hero and the heroine should meet to jlsaintwrites@yahoo.com.

Merry Christmas!
~JL Saint