ARC Review – Dangerous Refuge by Elizabeth Lowell

Dangerous Refuge is one of Elizabeth Lowell’s best efforts-a compelling combination of romance and murder mystery penned by a master of the genre. ~ Shadow, Guilty Pleasures

Description:
On the surface beautiful, quiet Shaye has little in common with dark, dangerous Tanner have little in common. He’s a suspicious big city cop come home to the historic Davis family ranch to settle his uncle’s estate. She’s working for an environmental conservancy that acquires and protects old ranches-and she wants to preserve the Davis homestead.

When the suspicious death of Tanner’s uncle at his ranch throws the two opposites together, tempers flare and sparks fly. While they have trouble seeing eye to eye, Shaye and Tanner agree on one thing: they need to uncover the truth.

Combining their unique skills-Shaye’s low-key approach and local connections and Tanner’s experience as a homicide detective-the unlikely pair share long nights in the pursuit of justice. Before they know it, the friction they generate turns to heat, igniting a burning love neither ever expected to find.

They believe passion this intense cannot last. But when Shaye becomes a killer’s target, Tanner realizes he’d give up anything to protect her-including his life.

Dangerous Refuge is one of Elizabeth Lowell’s best efforts-a compelling combination of romance and murder mystery penned by a master of the genre.

The story revolves around Shaye, a city girl who has found her home in the wild places, working with ranchers to preserve their land from future development by enrolling them in The Conservancy, a non-profit organization dedicated to land conservation. She stumbles across the body of Lorne, one of her ranchers, dead from what appears to be natural causes. But when she returns to the ranch to take care of the animals, she runs across Tanner, nephew to the dead Lorne.

Tanner, an LA cop, who left the area as a youth, begins to see some issues in Lorne’s supposedly natural death. He and Shaye hook up to see if they can discover more-and in the process begin discovering how much they like each other.
Lowell masterfully builds the suspense as it becomes more and more evident that Lorne was killed. She also builds the heat between the main characters as they check out the leads into Lornes death and discover that investigating murder can be dangerous.

The name of the book is a play on the name of the town where Lorne’s ranch is located, Refuge, Nevada.

Don’t expect to kind kinky sex in a Lowell book, but there’s plenty of steam and and lots of mystery and action. An excellent, satisfying read , this one will have you looking over your shoulder for the bad guys.