Race Against Time, Love Inspired Suspense, is a category romance about widowed mom, Madison Jacobs, and next-door-neighbor and police detective Brody Philips. The suspense part is a serial killer who makes his victims look like suicides.
The book opens with a dramatic scene where this masked serial killer attacks Madison, but she is saved by Brody who is off his usual routine and jogging home when she screams. After she recovers, she explains that she wasn't trying to hang herself, but that someone had drugged her and forced her to write a suicide note.
As the search for the killer continues, Brody and Madison fight their attraction to each other for various reasons. Brody's main reason is that he doesn't think he is worthy since he had been a bit of a player in his younger years and a woman had killed herself when he'd broken off their relationship. Madison's main reason for resisting Brody is that she'd had a great marriage, doesn't believe it can be dublicated, and doesn't want to settle for less.
The plot moves along with various suspense elements when the killer comes back to use Madison to taunt and leave messages for Brody. Madison is a brave woman, because I promise you that the second time a psychotic murderer got a hold of me, I would have grabbed my son and been on the first plane to my parents in Florida. But she held out and worked with Brody to find the bad guy.
Often Love Inspired romances have a lot of repetitive elements, but that wasn't the case here — just a few repeated internal angst thoughts. The plot moved forward, the romance developed slowly and believably. My biggest grumble: the climax. All I'm going to say is what cop doesn't take a gun to a syringe fight?
I enjoy Christy Barritt's mysteries and this suspense was no different. I'm not positive I understood the serial killer's original motives very well when the story was all said and done, but on a life scale that's probably a good thing.
If you like Love Inspired Suspense, you'll definitely like Race Against Time.
