To say that the plot of Irene Hannon’s latest romance suspense novel, Lethal Legacy, is predictable would be like saying Michael Phelps is an okay swimmer. In other words, the understatement of the current Olympic cycle.
While reading, you might feel as if you’ve walked into a rerun of Law & Order, minus the intellectual legal and moral debates. Or you might feel as if you’ve picked up any one of Hannon’s other 35-plus novels. Lethal Legacy starts off with a mildly intriguing set-up—a grieving daughter convinced that her father’s suicide was staged—but quickly devolves into your basic perfect-crime-gone-wrong scenario complete with Italian mobsters, dirty cops, a handsome detective with a lot on his mind, and one sexy damsel in distress.
To be fair, the characters aren’t entirely flat. They are, however, far from three-dimensional. Heroine Kelly Warren’s quirkiest features include a peanut allergy and an aversion to hiking in cold weather. Hunky male counterpart Detective Cole Taylor only falls short of godlike perfection due to his brief lapse in churchgoing. Spoiler alert: he sees the light by Chapter 12.
The novel’s villain is one giant conglomeration of clichés: an aging mob boss named Vincentio Rossi who orders hits while lamenting the “old days” and dining on veal scallopini. Just to prove that the old man has a soft side, Hannon sends Rossi to visit his grandson with a teddy bear.
Part of Hannon’s “Guardians of Justice” series, which follows a family of sexy adult siblings as they find love amid theatrical crimes, Lethal Legacy can be read as a stand-alone novel as well. It was released by Revell Books, a Christian-focused publishing company, on August 1.
A former Anheuser-Busch executive, Hannon has set her novel in St. Louis. Other than the occasional mention of Chesterfield or the Galleria or Kirkwood, however, the setting could be any American city.
Formulaic plotting aside, the novel does provide fast-paced, cinematic storyline. Hannon is a competent writer with a style that is straightforward, readable, and only occasionally painful. Metaphors are few and far between, but you'll get a flashing road sign to alert you to their presence. Expect to see plot twists coming well in advance. Expect minor, somewhat subtle preaching about the importance of Christian faith. Expect clunky summations of love, such as hot cop Cole’s conclusion after dinner with Kelly: “[H]er sweet goodness made him take a hard look at himself and convinced him he wanted to be worthy of someone like her.”
Perhaps most irritating is Hannon’s habit of punctuating wordy paragraphs with snarky single-line fragments.
Like this one.
Hardly cute at first, the pattern gets old. Quickly.
“Lots of champagne.”
“Finally.”
“A big one.”
“No way.”
“Not good.”
“So much for lunch.”
You get the point.
Anyone who knows anything about books should be suspicious of an author with nearly 40 novels on her resume. Emily Bronte only wrote one. Toni Morrison has written ten. Even Charles Dickens, who was paid by the word, cranked out fewer than twenty. But Hannon is an unabashed commercial romance novelist, churning out two books a year with titles like Deadly Pursuit, An Eye for an Eye, In Harm’s Way, and Tides of Hope. She won’t be winning any Pulitzers, but she has claimed two RITA Awards from the Romance Writers of America. As far as romance novels go, she seems to be at the top of her game.
Her latest book takes no risks and poses no challenges, intellectually or morally. Take it to the beach, plan on finishing it within a few days, and don’t count on it leaving an impression.
