A Risk Worth Taking

Kelly mixes romance, technology, and politics in her flimsy third Legionnaires contemporary romantic thriller (after Edge of Truth). Samira Desta, an Ethiopian hacker, is running for her life from U.S. Senator Tristan Hyland. After Hyland kills her fiancé and closes in on her, she must team up with Irish former doctor Jamie Armstrong to stay alive. Though the premise and the pairing are promising, inaccuracies and other flaws pull the reader away from the suspense of the story. Readers familiar with black women’s natural hair will be skeptical when Samira casually and easily puts on and removes wigs. Kelly writes the characters making quick references to racial stereotypes in a way that feels self-conscious and insensitive (“Jamie, if we’re going to judge on stereotypes you’d be grumpy and pasty and miserly and I’d be a kid with a bloated stomach and flies in my eyes”). A number of computer hacking details also fall flat. The prose, however, is adequate, somewhat making up for the story’s flaws. Agent: Nalini Akolekar, Spencerhill Associates. (June)