TRIPLE EXPOSURE

Author: Colleen Thompson ISBN: 9780843961430 8/2008 SUSPENSE Publisher: DORCHESTER

A mother’s love. A son’s life snuffed out. A killer at large. Snapshots of reality, except sometimes layered images do not add up to a whole picture of the truth. Better than anyone, photographer Rachel Carson knows the camera can lie. That’s how lurid altered pictures of her appeared on the Internet, starting a downward spiral that ended with her shooting a nineteen-year-old stalker in self-defense. Fleeing the press and the threats of an unidentified female caller, she retreats to her remote hometown in the Texas desert. In Marfa, where mysterious lights hover in the night sky, folks are used to the unexplainable, and a person’s secrets are off limits. But recluse Zeke Pike takes that philosophy even further than Rachel herself. In her viewfinder Zeke’s male sensuality is highlighted, his unexpressed longing for human contact revealed. Through a soft-focus lens, she sees a future for them beyond their red-hot affair, never guessing their relationship will expose the lovers to more danger than either can imagine.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Colleen Thompson always delivers intricately plotted suspense romances with her novels, and her latest, TRIPLE EXPOSURE, is certainly no different.

Rachel Copeland has been through hell and lived to tell the tale. After defending herself from a student who had taken an attraction too far, Rachel returns to her hometown of Marfa and the life she knew before moving to Philly. It is there that she meets mysterious and sexy loner Zeke Pike. For reasons of his own that he holds very close to the chest, Zeke now lives a quiet life in Marfa, carving furniture from wood. When Rachel is asked by a local activist to take photographs of the town's citizens at their different works of art, she is thrust into Zeke's life, to his dismay. But even as the attraction between the two starts to heat up, there is another threat that looms for Rachel. The mother of the boy Rachel killed hasn't let his death go and wants revenge.

This is not the first novel I have read by Colleen Thompson, and it certainly won't be the last. This author is fantastic at setting up wonderfully rich suspense plots with twists that will leave the reader hanging until the very last page is turned. There were actually two unknowns in this story, the second being about Zeke's past that he had left behind. As the romance between Rachel and Zeke build up, the reader is given small tidbits of both unknowns until the end, where it all comes together with a great big bang!

I liked Rachel in that through everything that she had been through, she persevered to move on with her life doing what she loved, which was taking pictures and flying. Zeke was great, too, as I wanted to know what happened to make him the way he was in the beginning of the novel. But seeing Rachel able to pull him out of the darkness of his past was great, too. The attraction between both characters was almost instantaneous, but because of their pasts, they both had to take it slow in getting to know each other before moving things to any kind of physical relationship. But when it did, it was very believable. These two together were sensual in not an overpowering way, which I think fell in line with what they both stood for and the way their relationship progressed.

I recommend all Colleen Thompson novels as she writes some of the best suspense romances out there, but I will keep a special place on my shelf for TRIPLE EXPOSURE, as it was a great read!

Maame Kanbi