Harlequin Duets, $5.99, ISBN 0-373-44088-X
Contemporary Romance, 2000

Liz Ireland’s The Love Police and Colleen Collins’s Rough and Rugged come in the same volume.

So, here we go, back to the chop shop. This time there’s a double whopper – on the right we have Liz Ireland serving up a ditsy no-social life kook and a macho cop, and on the left we have the workaholic no-social life woman and a rugged cowboy. It’s a good thing both authors are accomplished comedians that tickle the funny bone in the right places with killer punchlines, making this Harlequin Duets a surprisingly entertaining if unmemorable read. So much talent, all relegated into undistinguished, faceless authors creating yet another item in the category mass-manufactured romance catalog. The Stalinists in all of us should be multiply orgasmic.

Liz Ireland continues the cheering for everything cowboy by having our ditsy, pure, clueless heroine ditching her rich dull, milquetoast dentist hubby-to-be for his brother, a cop. Colleen Collins keeps faithfully to the tradition that cowboys in tight underwear make the best romance heroes. Everything cop, everything cowboy, with characters so predictable and the plot so unexciting that it is only Ms Ireland and Ms Collins – whoa, Ms Collins! – keeping the snappy lines coming that keep me chuckling.

These authors should grab a good agent and get a deal with Avon or Random House or anything. They are both too good for cowboys and cops and romance in monochrome.