Dangerous Moves by Karen Rock

Narrated by Teddy Hamilton & Callie Dalton

The setup for Dangerous Moves does require a certain suspension of disbelief but I was prepared to go with it. Or, at least, I thought I was. Detective Blake Knight goes undercover at a male revue to bust a steroid ring. The romance part comes in the form of the club owner’s daughter and acting manager, Reese Landon, who trips Blake’s switch.

I knew from the blurb that Blake would go undercover as a stripper but I suppose I expected that he had previous dance training. Blake does not. In fact, he appears to initially have no rhythm at all when Reese, who is a professional dancer, gives him a lesson so he can believably undertake the role. However, Blake magically has a photographic memory and when Reese demonstrates a routine to him ONE TIME, he is able (somehow) to reproduce it so he’s good to go.

My eyes were rolling so hard.

Shortly after starting with the Magic Mike-style strip show, Blake transfers from dancing to bartending (another role he has no experience with and for which he lacks skills) as if this is something that happens all the time. It is never questioned. I did not know why. I questioned it.

Blake and Reese have a spark of attraction which quickly becomes a conflagration. They try to resist their attraction but it is impossible to deny.

One of the reasons Reese is reluctant to get into a relationship with Blake is because she is worried her dad might be implicated in a crime and Blake may stumble upon it during his investigations. I struggled with this too because we are told at the start that the reason Blake goes undercover is because their confidential informant has been shot and is in a coma. The CI is Reese’s dad. I didn’t quite understand why Reese’s dad would be an informant for the police if he’s involved in the steroid ring. Or, if he was, why he had not declared that to the police in order to cut a deal in return for his cooperation. Instead, the story had it that he agreed to become a CI because the police had evidence the club had been serving minors and they used it as leverage.

There were other things which did not work for me. Mostly it was down to the plot. The writing was occasionally a little overwrought for my liking but for the most part it was pretty good actually. The style was well done – but the plot was just too unbelievable. It may well be that a different one of Ms. Rock’s books would work very well for me.

The narration, by Teddy Hamilton and Callie Dalton, was good but not enough to save the listening experience for me. I’m not sure if it was because I wasn’t enjoying the story much and therefore I was prone to notice, but it did seem to me that neither Ms. Dalton or Mr. Hamilton were displaying their best here. There were some errors and times when I felt the tone used did not match the text. Also, there were instances when it was difficult to distinguish Blake from Reese when Mr. Hamilton was narrating – something I haven’t experienced with him before. That said, the narration was what kept me listening at all and it definitely wasn’t bad. It’s just I have heard them both perform better in other books.

I did have to adjust a little to hearing Callie Dalton reading in third person – most of what I’ve listened to from her has been Mariana Zapata books which are first person. It was a somewhat weird experience as I have so closely associated Ms. Dalton with that style. That’s certainly not a fault with the book or the performance, just something I noted.

If listeners can get over the plot issues better than I could their experience may well be better than mine. The narration is solid. But unfortunately Dangerous Moves did not work for me.

Kaetrin