Law and Disorder by Heather Graham

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ve spent the past week considering what to say about Law and Disorder. My problem with this story is that I ended up quite disappointed in it. The premise sounded great, and I’ve heard good things about Heather Graham before… but the actual content of the book? Overall–this was a story trying to be something it was not, and because of that, it’s just (barely) okay.

Let’s start with the good bits. The actual crime, while crazy, keeps the story moving and is intriguing. Graham included a lot of history and details for the setting, and while I have no idea if any of it is truly reflective of the area or totally fictional, it was both interesting and in-depth. The mystery and tension were well done. The main story regarding the crime was wrapped up nicely.

However, this is a “romantic suspense” book, yet Law and Disorder would have been better served without the romantic component to it. Many times I felt myself wondering why they were having romantic thoughts in such a dire situation, and later why they moved things along unhealthily fast. I can believe the attraction at first sight part, but there still needs to be a foundation for a relationship, and that was missing in this story.

Another minor issue was Dakota’s nickname, Kody. There was nothing indicating this was her nickname, and I’d guess that anyone who has never known a “Dakota” will be briefly disoriented before realizing that Dakota and Kody are the same person.

Then we get to the part that really detracted my enjoyment of this book: the vocabulary. There were several instances where it was unnecessarily dumbed down. Here are a few examples:

• “…he was an FBI man…” (what’s wrong with using the phrase “FBI agent” when speaking of this profession?)
• “…but, hey, they call bad guys bad guys because…they’re bad.” (*facepalm*)
• “It was dark. Darker than any darkness Kody had ever known before.” (I wish I was joking about this line.)

Finally, I’m not certain if the author was trying to be funny, but several times the similarity to Stockholm syndrome is alluded to, yet our heroine is apparently too daft to know it exists. There was one line in particular that stood out regarding this: “And that Nick had been her captor–who had turned into her savior. There was surely a name for the confusion plaguing her!”

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

 

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