MIDNIGHT ALIAS – Elle Kennedy
A Killer Instincts Novel , Book 2
Signet Eclipse
ISBN: 978-0-451-23944-0
February 2013
Romantic Suspense

New York City, New York - Present Day

Staking out a strip joint should be a fun job for Luke Dubois and his team, but it's not as exciting as they'd imagined.  Their team has been contracted by the Drug Enforcement Agency to find their missing agent, and they are pretty sure that Vince Angelo, the owner of the strip club that fronts for a Mafia-run drug dealing operation, has something to do with it.  They've been told that the dancer, Livy Lovelace, may have information for them, and Luke isn't sure how to deal with that.  Livy is the most gorgeous, classiest woman he's ever seen, and he wouldn't mind getting to know her better—if he could control his libido around her.

Olivia Taylor is living a nightmare.  When trying to pay for her mother's cancer treatments, her own tuition, and all of their living expenses became too much, Olivia applied for a job at the strip club, but after being attacked one night, things changed for the worse.  Vince covered up the incident and then paid off all of her bills, old and new, before declaring himself in love with her.  She's managed to hold him off and hopes to keep him at bay until she graduates in three months.  But when Luke asks for a private dance, things get even trickier for her.  Olivia finds herself attracted to Luke, but considering that Vince considers her his possession, that attraction is too dangerous to contemplate.

Something big is going down at the club, and Olivia is an innocent caught up in it in MIDNIGHT ALIAS.  She's been supporting her mother since the first diagnosis, but the latest relapse has drained them financially.  Olivia wasn't happy with her decision to strip, but after the attack she's in a worse place than she could have imagined.  Luke is taken by Livy, and after speaking privately with her, he's pleasantly surprised to find the intelligent, strong woman behind the pretty face and killer body.  He senses that there is more going on than she's willing to admit, but how can he get her to trust him without blowing his cover?

Though this is the second book in the Killer Instincts series, each story stands on its own, with the commonalities being the characters.  Kane and Abby (from MIDNIGHT RESCUE) aren't very prominent, but other members of the team, Trevor, Holden, D, and Sullivan, are part of the surveillance team. And Isabel, who worked with Abby for Noelle, the Queen of the Assassins who has her own team, is also helping them on this mission.  Readers get a chance to learn a little more about some of these characters, and Trevor and Isabel are featured a bit more, setting up the next book in the series, MIDNIGHT GAMES, due in August.  Whether you've read the previous novel or not, MIDNIGHT ALIAS is a captivating suspense with likeable characters that I highly recommend.

Jennifer Bishop