In Which I Review Breaking Point by Pamela Clare

So hiatus is pretty awesome for things like reading books. Reading lots of books, even. Reading books like Breaking Point by Pamela Clare.

This is yet another entry in the I-Team investigators series, of which I’ve already reviewed a couple of books. This one follows New Orleans belle Natalie Benoit, who pretty much from the first sentence of the book is in seriously deep trouble. While away at a conference in Mexico, she finds herself in the middle of a murderous rampage by a local cartel, is then kidnapped by said cartel, and is hauled off to be murdered herself, probably following some pretty horrific torture.

Sucks to be her.

But it also sucks to be Zach McBride, US Marshall, who finds himself in the custody of the aforementioned cartel because they think he stole a shipment of cocaine from them. He’s already been undergoing intensive torture for about six days before Natalie is thrown into the cell next to him.

Natalie and Zach manage to work together to escape the cartel, make their way through Mexico (at great peril), cross the US/Mexico border (at great peril), and then finally make their endangered way back to Denver to investigate the suspicious circumstances of Natalie’s capture. Hot sex, lots of “this is not a serious relationship” talk, and “oh why can’t this be a serious relationship?” thoughts abound.

Overall this was a solid contemporary with lots of characters we already know, lots of awesome and not-so-awesome happenings, and a fine romance (even if Zach does go from “I can’t do this” to “I must do this” rather quickly).

I did have a couple of issues. Natalie has been noted as a mysterious figure in the I-Team, coming to Denver after Katrina and never talking about her past. It turns out that during the hurricane she was locked in a morgue locker by a sociopath. And then, after she was rescued, her parents and her fiance were killed in a car accident on the way to get her.

Now look, it makes sense for Natalie to have no one waiting for her return from this ordeal. And I’m totally down with a character who has tragedy in his or her past. But all of those things had to happen to her? Really? OK. Even if we accept that all of those things had to happen, did they have to happen all in the same day? Like, her trauma couldn’t have been the storm on Monday? Then the locker thing on Tuesday? And the simultaneous death of everyone she loves on Wednesday? (Which by the way, she has to own no matter what-- they were coming to see her).

It just seemed like overkill.

On the other hand, I do have to appreciate Clare’s courage (and yes, it is courage) in allowing sometimes bad things to happen to her characters. In Naked Edge, Gabe loses part of his leg trying to save the woman he loves. In Breaking Point, Darcangelo mentions that Tessa is not doing well because she had a miscarriage a couple of months ago, and is suffering the difficult beginnings of a new pregnancy. Later, in the book’s climax, (SPOILER?) Darcangelo’s thumb is severed during the conflict. This lends a weight of realism to the stories, and a feeling that there could be consequences for the characters.

I think a lot of authors (ahem) would be afraid to have bad things happen to their characters, both because of their own feelings toward them and because of fan reaction. I’m not saying that I would love it if the characters died, and despite my issues with Tessa and Darcangelo’s story (see: DNF), I’m sorry to hear both about her miscarriage and his thumb. But in the end it makes them feel more like real-life people, and to me that's the mark of a solid book, and a solid series.