High Noon [Kindle Edition]

Great characterisation as one expects from Nora Roberts - and you are straight in at the deep end with both plot and characterisation - how does she do it - within 10 pages you feel as if you know them and your heart rate increases as theirs does!!

Anyway, Phoebe a police Lieutenant hostage negotiator - highly competent and tough is called to a potential suicide - there she meets Duncan (really great guy - lots of good friends in very useful places - and really rich!!); sparks fly and the romance is on from the start. It does however, a other reviewers have noted take something of a back seat for the majority of the novel. This is a high energy, fast paced book and whilst we find out about Phoebe's past life and her current problems with her mother (agoraphobic); the old savannah plantation house (lives there otherwise her mother will be on the street)and an arrogant, nasty male cop who really has a problem with females having any authority - it left a few loose ends for me.

It was a quick and easy read and that's why I only gave it 4 (3.5 really); entertaining and I can see the similarities drawn by others to her JD Robb series, though I confess I didn't whilst reading it!! For me it just had a little something missing - maybe it would've been better if Duncan hadn't been so wonderful and putting everything right - thereby kind of dismissing other characters.

That said, still enjoyed it and worth the read.

In style and content, very similar to Robert's Dallas and Roarke stories under the pseudoname of JD Robb, except for the fact that this is not futuristic. Roberts uses the same short abrupt sentences. Also the character of Pheobe is very similar to that of Eve Dallas. Both are tough, competent women with traumatic backgrounds which have led them into their careers. Unlike Dallas, Pheobe has other demands on her apart from her job. Her's are her lively, shopaholic, seven year old daughter, her agrophobic mother and the fact that because of a will she is tied to living in an old house in Savannah. If she leaves, then her mother is automatically thrown out of the only place that she feels safe in. Pheobe is a woman who takes her family commitments as seriously as she does her job as police negotiator.

She has the added problems of a chauvanistic subordinate police officer who dislikes taking orders from a woman and an unknown stalker who is determined to punish her for some wrongdoing known only to him; are they one and the same? Added to that, is that she, a woman who hasn't time for love, falls in love with Duncan Swift, a man who seven years ago won the lottery and is a millionaire.

However, the romance really takes second place to the suspense elements of the novel. A good read nevertheless.

Nora Roberts is the master of romantic suspense and she shows her stuff in "High Noon!" The Chief Hostage negotiator for the Savannah Georgia Police Department, Lt. Phoebe McNamara builds a romance with Duncan Swift, the owner of a local sports bar, after meeting while trying to convince a depressed bartender not to commit suicide (after Duncan had fired the guy on St' Patrick's day). Ducan is impressed wioth how Phoebe is able to convince the bartender to come down from the roof. Phoebe is good at her job, having experienced the terror of being a hostage as a girl when an unstable man broke into the family home and held her hostage for hours. As a hostage negotiator she has great sense of when softball a situation and when to take immediate action. but she also is strained by family matters and it is difficult to balance career and family. Duncan is deeply attracted to Phoebe, and their relationship deepens in spite of Phoebe not wanting to get into deep. But then a ruthless opponent begins to stock her and she is soon worried that she will be trapped by her own fear. With Duncan by her side, can she face the unknown?