Mean Streak

Doc In Distress

Sandra Brown’s new bestseller Mean Streak may not be classified as chick-lit, but the romantic thriller has been written for a predominantly female readership. The heroine’s appearance is wrapped up in a few lines, but the hero’s eyes, muscles, arms, chest, height—his all-American maleness come up for detailed descriptions several times. The handsome, brooding bloke also has a mysterious past—to tame a man like that would be a fantasy for many women.

Emory Charbonneau is a wealthy paediatrician and marathon runner.  Her marriage to finance professional Jeff is already in trouble when she goes off on her own to a remote mountain trail to train for an upcoming race for charity. She doesn’t know it then, but Jeff is having an affair with her best friend Alice.

She wakes up with a head injury in a rugged log cabin, where the well-built, aquamarine-eyed stranger has been looking after her. He does all it takes to make her comfortable and pain-free, but won’t tell her his name or anything else. He claims he cannot call emergency services because he does not have a phone, and her phone’s battery is dead. He cannot take her back to the nearest town either, because snow and fog have made the roads dangerous to drive on.

After two days of not hearing from her, Jeff goes to the cops, but the two police officers, Knight and Grange who work on the case, have reason to believe that Jeff could have killed her and is playing the role of the worried husband to fool them.

In yet another strand, an FBI agent, Connell, is hunting for the mountain man, in connection with a mass shooting some years ago.

Captive in the cabin, in fragile emotional state, Emory is as afraid of her rescuer/captor as she is attracted to him.  When he drags her off to steal medical supplies to treat a young girl in the neighbourhood, who has been brutalised by her brothers, she is even more confused – the man is violent towards the delinquent brothers, but treats the girl with tenderness and care. Emory succumbs to his magnetism, and some steamy sex follows.

After four days, when he releases her back to civilisation, Emory has to tell the detectives a bunch of half truths, because she does not want them to hunt for the man.  But he has left a trace that brings Connell rushing there, which is when his name is revealed, as well as his complicated past.

There are many more twists and turns to the story, which is fast-paced and efficiently written, but also formulaic—perhaps Brown’s readers want it that way. Still it’s a quick, light entertaining read.

Mean Streak

By Sandra Brown

Publisher: Grand Central

Pages 416