Saturday, March 22, 2014

Windy City Heat by Remi Hunter


 Blurb:

When one of Officer Gina Aletti's informants goes missing, Gina's search for him unwittingly exposes secrets within the Chicago Police Department that may cost her job, her newfound love, and even her life.

Chicago Police Department Tactical Officer Gina Aletti employs a maverick style of police work to get the job done—but in the end she always brings down the bad guys. Sparks fly between Gina and her new boss Lieutenant Sean O’Connor over rules, procedure, and ultimately over much more, but her record is beyond reproach. When Gina is arrested for taking money and providing protection to the very drug dealers she seems so passionate about bringing down, will the truth cost Gina her job, love, and ultimately her life?

Review:

Okay, I’m prejudiced.  I think Chicago is the most beautiful city in the world, so when I see a book cover with even part of the skyline on it, I’m hooked.  When work on the Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter took me to the Musa Publishing website and I saw the cover and blurb for Windy City Heat, I had to read it.

They say we should write what we know.  Ms. Hunter obviously knows the Chicago Police Department, and Chicago’s Southwest Side.  She apparently has worked in an area of Chicago I have studiously avoided.  It’s not safe down there, and I salute her.  Our men and women in blue put themselves in harm’s way protecting the citizens of my beloved home town every day, and I thank them.

Gina Aletti’s a good cop, if a bit headstrong.  She first meets her new Lieutenant, Sean O’Connor after chasing an armed suspect into a project building without back-up, a procedural taboo, and her first words to him are something like, “Hey, back off, buddy!  That’s my collar!”  He promptly writes her up, and they’re off to a rather negative start, despite the sparks flying between them.  Her next faux-pas comes as the result of a promise she makes to an informant and his mother.  Despite orders to stay on the north end of their district, Gina strays into the south end, where her informant lives.  Her team is supposed to stay in Ganster Disciple territory, but Gina keeps straying into Latin Kings’ territory, where she doesn’t just get into trouble with Sean, she gets into trouble with the District Commander, Bill O’Leary and the King’s themselves.  Things heat up when people start trying to kill her.

Ms. Hunter kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the book, even though I figured out who did it fairly early in the book.  But again, that’s me.  You may not realize it as soon as I did.  Still, it was fun reading how they brought the bad guys down.

My only problems with the book were somewhat stilted dialog, and a lack of hyphens.  Ms. Hunter needs to learn about adjectival and adverbial phrases, which need to be hyphenated, and she needs to run lines with someone.  The cops I know are more likely to say, “You’re gonna go down for this,” than “You’re going to…”  What struck me as downright funny was, Ms. Hunter has the gang-bangers’ slang down pat, but then the cops would speak more formally.

This book was not self-published.  Her editor at Musa Publishing should have caught these problems.  In fact, this was the second book I’ve read from Musa, and both books had similar editing problems.  It’s a shame when authors suffer from the deficiencies of their publishers.

Otherwise, I highly recommend Windy City Heat—especially if you grew up in Chicago.  I may be a Northwest Sider, but I know where Kedzie and Pulaski are.  I went to Girl Scouts a block off Pulaski, and I worked for Ma Bell (before the phone company broke up) two blocks from Kedzie.  It’s so cool to read familiar street names in a book.

Length:  181 Pages
Price:  $5.99

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting. RIW

1 comment:

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