Mills & Boon, AU$7.75, ISBN 978-1-742-55076-3
Romantic Suspense, 2010

The Enforcer is Anna Perrin’s debut Mills & Boon Intrigue title, the publication being part of the prize of the author winning some writing competition sponsored by the publisher. The best thing about this one is the heroine Claire Lamont being far more competent and smarter than the average romance heroine. As for the rest, well, polite people would say that things could have been done better.

Claire Lamont is a psychologist with the FBI, and she is in danger when a dangerous rogue FBI agent that she was trying to get to vanished and she is now likely on his target list.

Brent Young, our FBI agent hero, is tasked to be her bodyguard, and he is reluctant because (a) he really doesn’t trust psychologists because he is too manly for such touchy-feely nonsense, (b) his beloved boss died under mysterious circumstances and he doesn’t want her to discover his true feelings about the dead Pete Sanderson—since these feelings don’t involve lovelorn buggery, this guy is just being melodramatic over nothing—oh, and (c), a last minute addition in the story, he has been betrayed by a woman before, so now all women are faithless whores, and since Claire is a woman, he can never trust her with anything of his ever.

So, our heroine is pretty capable at analyzing her circumstances and coming up with logical deductions and reasonable conclusions. She tries to take steps to take care of herself, and she is genuinely concerned about not getting killed. Considering the outrageous number of heroines in similar circumstances that are far more concerned about getting laid by the hero and whining about falling in love with this, Claire is a tall glass of water, and I like her.

Then there is Brent. He has a vicious mean streak that the author tries to justify by telling me over and over, “Oh, he had been hurt by a whore, and he is grieving over some dead dude, so he’s justified in saying cruel things to the heroine without any prompting each time he gets his moods!” I’m sorry, but the ease at which he shows his bare arse to the world tells me that he’s more likely just a mean bully that projects all his issues on other people and treats those people awfully because of this projection.

If on a usual day it would be the romance heroine acting like an emotional idiot when she should be fearing for her life instead, here it is Brent that gets bent over his ridiculous dramatics.

He wants to dump Claire and hunt for his boss’s killer, after accepting the assignment, because she’s just an icky woman and a psychologist and he hates both! He will tell her to her face just how much he doesn’t like her because she happens to be a shrink!

Then, because she’s hot, he decides that he’d glue himself close to her sexy body! Wait, he is having his moods and says mean and vicious things to her now! Then he’s feeling sorry for himself for being such an ass, and he’d go apologize to her! Oops, he’s saying horrid things to her again, because he’s having more moods!

Then, when these two seem to have bedded all the issues out of him, late in the story he announces to the heroine that he’s dumping her now because he’s been hurt by a woman before and she’s a woman so yeah, he’s not going to let her hurt him so he’s ending this.

This is the last straw for me, and I actually throw the book down to the floor in disgust. The “romance” up to that point had been nothing more than poor Claire constantly trying to analyze Brent and talking some sense into him, so he’s getting free sex and counselling from her. Instead of being grateful, he keeps doing things to hurt her over and over.

So, when he pulls that “Oh, did I tell you all women are faithless hos and you are a woman, so now I’m dumping ya!” nonsense just when the story is about to end, I realize poor Claire is getting herself a big weenie king that is going to be that patient that just won’t leave. She deserves better, but since she willingly shackles herself to this sad clown of an arse, I guess I can’t feel too sorry for her.

Oh, and the hero, despite the author telling me over and over is a super capable agent, is always conveniently away when the heroine gets into trouble. So, he’s not just an asshole, he’s an incompetent one as well.

Anyway, here’s an extra oogie just because the heroine is smarter than the usual sort, but yikes, the hero needs to be put down for the betterment of the world.