Casing the Copycat (Covert Cowboy Soldiers, 5)

A well written romantic suspense. Good plot and character development. I recommend this book. I received an advance ebook from Netgalley. This is my unbiased review

If you have read any of the Covert Cowboy Solider books you know the Thompson brothers, noble, protective and out to do the right thing. Well strap in, your in for a wild ride! This one you won’t see coming, it’s got so many twists and turns you don’t want to miss out.

Terrific book that I read in one sitting. This is the first book in this series I have read, but there is enough backstory provided that I didn't feel lost while reading it. I plan to read the earlier books and get the details I've missed. Quinn recently escaped her dangerous cult family after decades of abuse and fear. She now lives on the Thompson ranch with her twin sister, whose life she saved and is recovering from the injuries she received. Quinn has trouble adjusting to "normal" life and uses biting wit and sarcasm to hide her discomfort. She also has her share of pride and hides her inability to read from everyone except her eleven-year-old niece, who is teaching her. Quinn's life in the cult has taught her many skills, including observing and recognizing patterns. Dunne Thompson is one of the brothers whose ranch this is. Former military, he is still recovering from an injury on his last mission. He isn't as able to do ranch work as the others because of it, leaving him too much time for his latest obsession. After spending years trying to atone for his serial killer grandfather, Dunne is now trying to track down a copycat killer. He's dismayed when Quinn finds his "murder board" and stunned when she spots patterns neither he nor his brothers saw. A keen observer of human nature, Quinn quickly realizes that Dunne plans to go off on his own to stop the killer. I loved watching her foil his attempt to leave her behind and make a case for going with him. It doesn't take long for Quinn to prove her worth and for Dunne to accept her help. It doesn't come easy for him, as he knows the danger and fears for her safety. From here to the end, the action is fast, furious, and creepy to terrifying. I loved seeing the teamwork between Dunne and Quinn, balancing each other's strengths and weaknesses. The twists and turns led to a development I never saw coming. The final confrontation had me on the edge of my seat until it was over. The romance between Quinn and Dunne was pretty mild. Quinn has noticed Dunne among all the brothers but doesn't recognize the feelings he stirs in her at first. Dunne is surprised by his reaction to her and tries to bury it. But the more he gets to know her, the more he sees the vulnerability beneath the attitude, which speaks to his lonely heart. Despite his recognition of her abilities, he is very protective of her. Neither expects the attraction that flares between them, but Dunne is careful to keep it slow and easy. I loved the ending and her surprise at being asked for something as normal as a date.

Casing the Copycat by Nicole Helm is the first novel in her Covert Cowboy Soldiers series I've read, and it most certainly won't be the last. I'll admit to some character confusion from the outset because all the characters introduced were new to me, and their relationships well-developed in previous novels. However, it certainly didn't affect my enjoyment of this novel, which was one gruesome yet addictive read. Although it's been billed as romantic suspense, the romance really took a back seat in this novel, which is the main reason I'm giving it a 4.5-star rather than a 5-star rating. The main characters in this novel are Dunne, former soldier, now out of the military due to a broken femur, and Quinn, who escaped her dangerous and bizarre cult family, who abused, debased and terrorized her for decades. All are now living on the Thompson Ranch, where Quinn finally met up with and saved the life of her twin sister, Jessie, in a previous novel, and where the remaining characters are all calling themselves brothers, but are instead all brothers-in-arms rather than genetically related. All the men on this Wyoming ranch have altered their identities, and bid farewell to whomever they were before. Quinn, who was born into the cult, has no birth certificate, and there's no record of her anywhere--she's a ghost. Back in the 1970s, Dunne's grandfather was known as The Eye Socket Killer, a serial killer who committed grisley crimes (he removed the eyeballs of all his victims) before he was stopped, but apparently, according to the newspapers and other intel gathered by the Thompson brothers, there's a copycat killer on the loose, now committing the same bizarre and horrific crimes as Dunne's grandfather, and Dunne desperately wants to stop him. The basement of the ranch house is where the "brothers" have been collecting data about the more recent crimes, but when inquisitive Quinn, who is quite the puzzle solver, having survived a terrible upbringing within the cult, much of it being about the search for treasure, sneaks downstairs, she astounds Dunne by recognizing patterns and clues in the posted photos and articles that Dunne and his brothers totally missed, and it's not long before she forces herself into what Dunne had planned to be his solo attempt to find and apprehend the copycat killer. Once Quinn figures out that the copycat is really sending a message directly to Dunne, and the two head off to Nebraska to try and find the killer, things don't go at all as planned, and from that point on, hang onto your hat, because things are going to get really complicated, really dangerous and more bizarre than you can possibly imagine, which made this one hard novel to put down, and one which almost read like a horror novel, but kudos to Ms. Helm for writing one extremely original read. While I would have loved more romance ...

Dunne was following criminal happening that invol Ed his name. Quinn was helping figure it out. Nine Dunne`s out there causing trouble.