Double play

Double Play, by Penelope Neri

Dorchester, September 2005

Grade: C+

Elizabeth Harper vanished while hiking alone in Hawaii’s remote Kahana Valley State Park. There’s no evidence to suggest what happened…until Detective Jack McQuinn discovers she is the same woman he counseled online, a beauty whose coolly detached surgeon husband already spoke of her in the past tense. Did Dr. Richard Harper murder his wife, then set up her disappearance? Or did Elizabeth fake her own death to escape him? Then Dr. Harper’s body is allegedly ID’d at the site of a fatal car crash, the case is closed on his wife’s disappearance, and Jack McQuinn turns in his badge. He’s headed for New Mexico, a search for two people who disappeared into thin air, a woman he’ll never forget, and a deadly… DOUBLE PLAY

Liz is the wife of a successful doctor who beats the crap out of her. The only person who knows about her violet marriage is a friend she chats with on the internet. One day she tells her friends that she is finally leaving her husband and then she logs off. He never hears from her again.
The friends Liz was talking to online is hottie police Detective, Jack. Jack is investigating the disappearance of a woman hiker and he has not idea that the woman is the same lady he had talked to online.

After Liz's husband fakes his own death and his computer is searched, Jack finds out that Liz and his online friend are one in the same. He suspects that she also faked her own death, so she sets out to look for her and warm her that her abusive hubby is still alive and probably looking for her.

Jack finds Liz the same time her husband does. Jack convinces Liz to trust him, and they go on the run from Jack together. For six months Liz and Jack live in a semi peacefulness. They are dating, in love and are living close to Liz's parents, who the husband had forced her to cut ties with after they were married.

Liz's husband is back now, and not only does he want to kill Liz for leaving him, but he wants to kill her slowly and painfully. Does Jack save Liz in time? Of course he does! This IS a romance. We can't have the lovers being killed off before getting the chance to live happily ever after.
The book is 300+ pages, but I read it in under a day.

It wasn't super good, but it was a breezy, easy read. I'm sure fans of romantic suspense will enjoy it. I'm more into historical romance right now.