‘Last to Die’ more suspenseful than romantic

"Romantic suspense?” my daughter asked with a raised eyebrow as she scanned the spine of Kate Brady’s “Last to Die,” which I had just begun reading.

Darnit! Lindsey slipped one by me again. She had read aloud “six desperate women will be brutally murdered” from the back cover and I was sold, since it’s blood-and-guts murder mysteries I like, not romantic suspense.

Still ...

Yes, it’s a little formulaic. Protagonist Danielle “Dani” Cole is a police officer (of course), who’s damaged goods (of course) and there’s a man in her past (of course) whom she maybe could love if she’d just work up the courage to get past her issues. Of course!

But wow, Brady definitely knows how to put the “suspense” into romantic suspense, as Dani tries to figure out who's killing single pregnant women and what is happening to their babies.

The romantic aspects of the book are not overwhelmingly cloying, and the suspense more than makes up for them.

It’s even a little convoluted, which tends to be a good thing for a mystery as long as it all makes sense, and in “Last to Die” it does. The romantic lead is one Mitch Sheridan, who’s a photographer who has done much of his work in hazardous areas, especially war zones, (of course) and has had to return home to help hold together the philanthropic organization that he (of course) started to help those poor people in the areas he photographed.

But there are all sorts of shifting scenarios here, and no shortage of shifty people. I found myself sure that one person was the evildoer, and then sure that another was, and on and on.

And that, my friends, is a sign of a successful mystery, romantic or not.