| Captain Diana Lockworth works for army intelligence,
trying to find and and determine the validity of conspiracies. Her
failure to find any legitimate ones recently has her feeling like a
failure and comparing herself to her successful sister. But what
no one knows is that Diana also works for a secret organization called
Oracle. Oracle was a database secretly planted in the army's
computer network to help Oracle's agents uncover plots and threats.
Diana receives an email from Oracle telling her someone is going to
try to kill the President-elect of the United States and that she has
only 24 hours to stop them. From this point Diana is regularly
attacked, arrested and kidnapped while she single-handedly tries to
figure out who the bad guys are and how they're going to try to kill
Gabe Monihan.
This book has a wonderful premise, and to be honest there are some
really exciting action scenes in the book. It's written in an
hourly format, with each chapter being an hour of the day and the entire
book covering a 24 hour period.
What made the book a challenge to get through was Diana's flat
character for the most part. Right in the middle of the action
she'd stop and have regrets about her relationship with her mother and
sister. She has 24 hours to stop multiple attempts on the
president's life, but takes the time to worry about and resolve
life-long issues with her mother along the way. She would
occasionally laugh or crack a joke, which was entirely out of character
and pulled me out of the story each time. Any positive side of her
character was told to us by the author rather than shown to us by Diana.
The other aspect that spoiled the story for me was Diana working
completely alone the entire book, although the President-elect and his
enormous security team acknowledged the threat and believed her. To
help, they gave her a cell phone number to keep in touch. Oracle
put her on the mission in the first place, yet didn't assign any other
agents to help. In fact, the other agents turn on her instead of
believing her. I suspect the author was trying to justify
isolating Diana by making her not trust anyone, but when she managed to
do all she did in a 24 hour period, things that entire organizations
hadn't been able to do in years, it was just a bit too much.
The romance in the book is sweet, basically a few exchanges and some
flirty comments and thoughts. I really missed a more solid
relationship.
I started reading TARGET with high expectations, and don't deny that
the author has a wonderful understanding of politics and the Washington
'inside' scene. With the amount of explanations necessary to cover
all the issues, the amount of action and the limited time frame and book
length, this book falls short in key areas, predominantly
characterization.
Reviewed by Sue Waldeck for The Road to Romance
August 22, 2005 |
