Booklife Review

The ninth, and final, installment in Phillips’s Benson First Responders series, after Duplicity, centers on Detective Samantha “Sam” Jesse and Fire Captain Julio Espinoza-Vasquez, a deeply wounded former couple struggling to repair their relationship after a terrible tragedy at work caused Sam’s miscarriage two years ago. Thrown back together in a united hunt for a cunning serial arsonist—who’s recreating crime scenes identical to those that Richard Sylvana, currently behind bars serving a lengthy sentence, orchestrated 20 years ago—the pair quickly realize that the past, and their feelings for each other, are far from dead.

Phillips digs into love, obsession, religion, and healing in this blistering story that teems with unresolved hurt and grief, in the midst of a chilling—and dangerous—murder mystery. Sam’s sister, Bristol, is an upbeat addition to the cast, a vivacious, fiercely independent deaf woman—“dynamite wrapped in a delicate exterior”—who flirts through her cadre of admirers while waiting for “the one,” and Sam quickly realizes that her womanizing new partner, Romeo Alvarez, may be itching to fill that role. Sam tries her best to protect Bristol, while nursing her own broken heart and vacillating between her obsession with Julio and a stubborn refusal to revisit their past in revolving romance scenes that sometimes overwhelm the pair’s joint investigation.

Apart from Phillips’s well-crafted, and unnerving, arsonist events, the most intriguing part of this novel falls to Bristol and Sam’s engaging give-and-take, made even more appealing by the organic use of sign language that filters through the story. Transitions from the central crime mystery to the novel’s romance tend to be abrupt, and readers may be disappointed that Sam often defaults to needing a man to rescue her, but, still, the action is tense and the mystery adrenaline-charged, making the chase—and the story’s frantic ending—worth it.

Takeaway: First responders rekindle romance while hunting a serial arsonist.

Comparable Titles: Betta Ferrendelli’s Point of Origin, Ace Atkins's Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A