Narrated by Roger Wayne
I’ve listened to and reviewed the four full-length books in Rebecca Zanetti’s Deep Ops romantic suspense series, and I’d been hoping the former MI6 operator, Jethro Hanson (who first appeared in book three, Broken) would get a book of his own. The overarching plotline of the series – the hunt for the serial killer who had seemingly come back from the dead to haunt Angus Force – was completed in book four, Driven, so this one could be listened to as a standalone in terms of the plot, but the relationships between the recurring characters have all been previously established, so you’d miss out on that by starting here. The Deep Ops team has a great found family vibe, a sense of camaraderie born of familiarity and trust that comes through really strongly as they banter back and forth and tease each other, and it’s one of my favourite aspects of the series.
Gemma Falls and her four-year-old daughter Trudy have been on the run from her abusive ex since before Trudy was born. She’s currently in DC, staying in her friend Serena’s house while she’s away on a temporary research job, and has also temporarily taken over Serena’s teaching load at the university until her friend returns. She wants to fly under the radar as far as is possible, so isn’t very welcoming to another friend and colleague of Serena’s, Dr. Jethro Hanson, when he comes by the office to welcome her and offer to show her around campus next morning. She refuses with cold politeness.
Not only is Jethro former MI6, he was also part of an elite black ops unit within the department. Now ‘retired’ he just wants to move on, teach and leave his former life of violence behind him. Unfortunately, however, while Jethro may want to put his past behind him, his past obviously hasn’t got the memo; he receives a call from his former boss at MI6 advising him that a dangerous prisoner he’d spent six months tracking down has escaped and is now in the US – and is presumably coming for Jethro.
Hot on the heels of that call, Jethro gets one from Clarence Wolfe. Wolfe saved Jethro’s life when he was working with the Deep Ops team, and Jethro is more than ready to help Wolfe out if he needs it, but that isn’t the reason for the call. When Wolfe tells Jethro about a dead body that’s just turned up in DC and tells him he needs to see it, Jethro protests that he’s out of the business now and isn’t interested – until Wolfe tells him that the body had a note addressed to him attached to it. Jethro doesn’t recognise the victim – but he knows only too well who left the note. The dangerous escapee is his brother Fletcher – who, like Jethro, was MI6 and black-ops – who made a living as a contract killer until Jethro hunted him down and put him behind bars, but now he’s clearly out for revenge and will stop at nothing to get it.
The author does a good job of combining the two plotlines in Unforgiven, building the suspense while Jethro and Gemma dance around each other; he drawn to her but torn between wanting her and wanting to keep her safe by keeping his distance and Gemma torn between the attraction she feels to Jethro and the need to keep her secret. It’s fast paced, with lots of action, some interesting new characters (I don’t know if there are more books planned for the series, but I certainly wouldn’t mind more of Scott the hot lawyer!), gentle humour and the terrific comradeship among the Deep Ops crew. Although he helped them track down a serial killer, Jethro doesn’t regard himself as part of their team and has a hard time accepting help; he’s used to working alone and doesn’t want any of them endangered by Fletcher’s schemes, but they’re a persistent bunch whose thinking on the matter is very different to Jethro’s and I liked how they gradually break down his walls and make it clear they aren’t going anywhere, and how he comes to realise he likes having people he knows he can trust at his back.
The romance is fairly slow to start, which makes perfect sense given Gemma’s situation, but there’s so much going on that it takes a back seat to the suspense plotline. The early stages of their relationship, when Gemma is slowly coming to trust Jethro and to let down her guard a little, are well done, but once they sleep together that’s it – there’s no further relationship development to speak of and the romance becomes kind of bland. Plus, Jethro flips from not wanting any commitment to deciding he wants to be with Gemma in the blink of an eye – and I wasn’t convinced it was a desire borne of love or emotional connection; it seemed more like his protective instincts going into overdrive.
The biggest problem I had with this book though, is the number of inconsistencies in the premise and some areas of the plot. For example, right at the beginning, we’re told Gemma has taken up a university teaching post at short notice – and that she’s never taught before. What? How could she get a teaching job with no previous teaching experience? How did she pass qualification and background checks given her string of false identities? We’re also told Jethro’s mother was a duchess, which means his father was a duke. So – if Fletcher is the older brother why isn’t he the duke now? Their lineage is mentioned a few times, but as far as I could see, it’s completely irrelevant. So why bother?
In addition, there were some things in the writing that kept pulling me out of the story, the most frequent being the incorrect use of idiomatic language. Brits don’t say “for bloody’s sake” for instance – it’s “for God’s sake” or “for fuck’s sake” – and while that’s the one that most stuck in my mind, there were quite a few others.
Roger Wayne’s narration throughout this series has been consistently good, and he delivers another enjoyable and engaged performance here. He has a good range of character voices, differentiates expertly between a fairly large cast and maintains consistency in his portrayals of the recurring characters such as Force, Wolfe and, most importantly, Jethro, whose English accent is consistent and more than decent. His female voices are always good, too – never too high-pitched or overly mannered, so that the women sound as smart and capable as they’re written to be. He does a great job with the relationships between Jethro, his two former MI6 buddies and the Deep Ops guys, conveying a real sense of affection in their teasing banter; his pacing is spot on and he knows how to ramp up the tension in the action scenes and turn up the heat in the steamier moments. It’s a very good performance, and Mr. Wayne is someone I enjoy listening to – but I just couldn’t get past the continual mispronunciation of the heroine’s name. Gemma is usually said with a soft “g”, so it sounds like “Jemma”; for some reason, it’s said with a hard “g” (as in “game”) and sometimes, even sounds like “gamma”. It would have been annoying enough had it been the name of a secondary character, but when it’s the heroine and it appears several times a page, I’m afraid it was impossible to ignore, and got on my nerves very quickly.
In the end, I liked Unforgiven but didn’t love it. The plot is well-executed, Gemma and Jethro are likeable and I enjoyed the relationships between friends and teammates, but the romance is under-developed and I just couldn’t become invested in it. The narration works on just about every level – it’s well acted, clearly differentiated and strongly characterised – but I’d have given it a higher grade had I not winced every time I heard the heroine’s name. I can’t offer an unqualified recommendation, but If you’re looking for a decent romantic suspense novel, or you’ve been following the series, then Unforgiven may be worth your time.
Caz
Buy Unforgiven by Rebecca Zanetti on Amazon
1 thought on “Unforgiven by Rebecca Zanetti”
Comments are closed.