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
