Review of Marie Force's Fatal Flaw

Title: Fatal Flaw (Fatal #4)

Author: Marie Force

Publisher: Carina Press

Format: eBook

Source: NetGalley

Publication Date: February 6, 2012

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

If you’ve read many of my reviews, you’ll soon see that I’m not a big fan of romantic suspense. Frankly, I’m a wimp! But this past summer I read Marie Force’s wedding novella Fatal Destiny and liked it so much that when I saw Fatal Flaw was available on NetGalley, I instantly requested it. It then sat on my Kindle for months. And I mean MONTHS!!! I finally got around to reading it yesterday, and now I can’t believe I waited to read it this long. Even though I haven’t read any of the first 3 novels in the series, I could pick up this book and follow along without any problem. And since there are a lot of narrative threads in this book, I think it’s fairly impressive that I could dive right in.  

Fatal Flaw picks up right after Senator Nick Cappuano and D.C. Police Lieutenant Samantha “Sam” Holland return from their honeymoon. On Sam’s first day back to work, she’s opening some of the cards sent after the wedding and finds one with a thinly veiled threat. She then goes to Nick’s office and scoops up all of his cards (and there are nearly 1000 between the two of them!) to see if hers was the only threatening one.

Sam then gets called out to a puzzling murder scene. A restaurant owner and his teenage employee were locked into the deep freezer and asphyxiated, but the murdered left the deposit bag for the night sitting on the counter. As Sam and her team investigate, they learn that both the owner and the teenager had no enemies to speak of, and the investigation seems to stall. But soon Sam finds herself dealing with a handful of murders – all of victims with no apparent enemies. She has to uncover the truth before this budding serial killer turns his eyes towards more personal targets.

There is a lot to like about this book, but the protagonists and secondary characters are what sell it for me. Sam’s a very appealing heroine. She’s tough but comes across as a very real person, since she’s experienced infertility issues and has to deal with her father’s failing health. Nick is a very sexy hero who’s very much in love with the police lieutenant, which makes him all the more charming. The secondary characters come across as real people as well, since they have their flaws but still make for a tight-knit support group for Sam.

The book is easy to read, with lots of action interspersed with various views of the different dramas occurring in all the characters’ lives. This kept me interested, but it also felt a bit like a soap opera, and I kept wondering why so much time was spent on the secondary characters instead of Sam and Nick. About halfway through the book I found myself wondering when we’d get back to the murders, because it seemed like we were spending more time on individual relationships than the suspense part of the novel. Additionally, the resolution felt a bit deus ex machina – Sam’s dad has been in a medically induced coma and as soon as he comes out of it and hears the details of her cases, he puts all the threads together and WHAMMY he solves the case.

That said, I found the book really engrossing. I loved reading about the various characters and their relationships, and while I’m usually not a romantic suspense fan, I really liked this book. I think that if you like thrillers or more “suspense” this might not be the book for you, but if you enjoy character driven drama, I highly recommend Fatal Flaw. I’ll definitely be catching up on the first three books in the series!