A(nother) Year of Orenda – Deep Dark Night by Steph Broadribb

Today Mandie is back with her review of the final Lori Anderson book, Deep Dark Night. I loved the Lori Anderson series and thoroughly enjoyed this book when I read it last year. you can find my thoughts right here. Here’s what the book is all about:

About the Book

Fearless Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson travels to Chicago to trap the head of a notorious crime family, in a high-stakes, nail-biting mission that sees her trapped in one of the city’s tallest buildings during a blackout…

A city in darkness. A building in lockdown. A score that can only be settled in blood…

Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection.

An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city’s tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces, one by one. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare.

When a power failure plunges the city into darkness, the building goes into lockdown. But this isn’t an ordinary blackout, and the men around the poker table aren’t all who they say they are. Hostages are taken, old scores resurface and the players start to die.

And that’s just the beginning…

Mandie’s Thoughts

After the action in Deep Dirty Truth, Lori has found herself once again working for Agent Malone of the FBI as she owes him. She wants the debt over and done with so that he can’t hold anything over her. Still feeling the last case she doesn’t want to go this one alone, so she teams up with JT, believing that together they can get this job done quickly and get back to normality (whatever that is).

Travelling to Chicago they are out of their comfort zone and relying on the backup of a man they don’t trust. As you can imagine things do not go exactly to plan and they find themselves locked in a hotel room fighting for their lives, relying on total strangers to tell the truth and help them escape. For once however Lori’s quick temper and smart mouth may just actually be an advantage to her and help keep her alive. The action in this book is definitely non-stop and we finally get to see the true dynamic between Lori and JT as they finally admit their relationship could possibly permanent. Its this that once again sees Lori putting her own life in jeopardy in order to save JT, after all Dakota needs to have at least one parent alive and looking after her and unless she does as she is told then this just won’t happen.

As much as this is very much a Lori Anderson adventure, I did like the fact that once again JT was a big part of the story having really only been a bit player in the two previous books. Lori frustrates the hell out of him but he is damn sure that they will both get out of this latest predicament alive. There is a different feel and pace to this book, and I think this is down to the fact that different events that have weaved their way through past books all seem to tie up in Deep Dark Night making it a real advantage if you have read the books in order. This is the fourth book in the Lori Anderson series, and I have been quite lucky in the fact that being the slow reader that I normally am I have come to this series late meaning that I had the entire series to read and I devoured them all in quick time with this one being no exception.

Thanks to Steph Broadribb and her ability to create a character you are routing for from the get go, I am going to miss Lori and JT.

About the Author

Steph Broadribb was born in Birmingham and grew up in Buckinghamshire. Most of her working life has been spent between the UK and USA. As her alter- ego – Crime Thriller Girl – she indulges in her love of all things crime fiction by blogging at crimethrillergirl.com, where she interviews authors and reviews the latest releases. She is also a member of the crime-themed girl band The Splice Girls. Steph is an alumni of the MA Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at City University London, and she trained as a bounty hunter in California, which inspired her Lori Anderson thrillers, She lives in Buckinghamshire surrounded by horses, cows and chickens. Her debut thriller, Deep Down Dead, was shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Awards in two categories, and hit number one on the UK and AU kindle charts. My Little Eye, her first novel under her pseudonym, Stephanie Marland was published by Trapeze Books in April 2018.

The Lori Anderson Series: