Ivy, $6.50, ISBN 0-8041-1968-6
Romantic Suspense, 2001

Hmm, I Got You, Babe (ugh, I hate that song) may be marketed towards the Susan Andersen/Jennifer Crusie crowd, but I find it flat. The humor isn’t funny, and in a funny cop romance like this one, that’s a fatal flaw.

Renee Esterhaus has a long string of criminal records, hence when she is false accused of robbery, nobody believes her. So she flees, by using the most broken down car she has. Smart. The car dies on her, and now she is stuck in some backward region of Texas with a bad bounty hunter hot on her tail.

What is a gal like her to? Well, she can, maybe, hitch a ride with somebody? That’s what she does, but she just has to offer sex to John DeMarco in return for a ride. Why? I’m told it’s because she wants to get his attention. By offering him something she has no intention to give.

I tell you, they really bring in romance heroines from the stupid place, don’t they?

And so the story goes. John DeMarco is a cop, haha, who is suspended – okay, “persuaded” to go on a vacation after he demolished a paper towel dispenser (haha… sigh). He suspects, and he gets the half-truth from Renee soon enough. But our heroine just keeps lying and lying and lying and lying even after she decides he’s a hot one. Fine, lying’s good if it’s for self-preservation, but most of the lies here are unnecessary and only to serve as contrivances. Excuse for Renee to stage some stupid, inept getaway that will end with her face on John’s lap or something to that effect.

John is a cute hero, if you can call a cop on the verge of breaking down and assaulting those in his custody cute. At least, compared to Renee, he comes off like a genius, albeit one led around by his Mr Winkie. Put in the author’s flat DOA attempts at humor – old ladies showing off their scars, anyone? – and I Got You, Babe is an exercise in inept comedy.