I decided to review these two romantic mysteries together, since if you like one you'll like both. (And conversely, if you think one is too sappy, stay away from the other.)
Let's start with Nora Roberts, since she is, of course, the genre queen. Fiona Bristow has made a wonderful life for herself on Orcas Island, in the Pacific Northwest. She trains dogs for a living and, with her own three labs, volunteers on search-and-rescue missions. But life wasn't always so idyllic. Several years back, she was attacked by a serial killer who already had a long track record of killing his victims. Fiona managed to escape, and the killer was captured. Although he's behind bars, the killings have resumed. Someone, it seems, has picked up where the killer left off. Soon it becomes clear that Fiona is the unfinished business, and the new killer wants to finish what his mentor started.
Meanwhile, a handsome stranger has moved to the island. Brooding artist Simon Doyle has an incorrigible puppy that needs training fast. Imagine the reader's surprise when Simon and Fiona fall in love! Who would have ever guessed? (Well, I did, actually. But I've been doing this kind of work for a while!)
There's a reason why Nora Roberts is so wildly popular--she can somehow make a hackneyed theme seem fresh. (Boy meets girl, then conflict drives them apart, then they live happily ever after.) Pick up any of her books and you won't be disappointed; this one is particularly down-to-earth and exciting.
Catherine Coulter's latest wasn't quite as satisfying. Ballet teacher/sleuth Erin Pulasky's latest assignment is to obtain evidence that a drug company has deliberately caused a shortage of their cheaper medicine in order to force cancer patients to take a more expensive (i.e. lucrative) drug. She breaks in to steal documents and makes a clean getaway. In an amazing coincidence, a company official is murdered at roughly the same time and location. The police figure that whoever broke in must have either murdered the guy or seen who did it.
And here's where it gets sort of silly. One of Erin's ballet students has a father who is an FBI agent. He asks Erin, whom he hardly knows, to babysit his daughter for several days while he's out working the case of the murdered drug exec. He then compounds the problem by inviting the other agents on the case over to her house, where they proceed to discuss the case in front of her. One of the agents even invites her along when she's interviewing a witness. Although the mystery itself was sound, the absurdity of the agents' behavior ruined the book for me.
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