The Marshal's Justice by Delores Fossen

It is always my hope when I begin reading a romance novel, or venture into the works of a new author, that I will absolutely love what I read.  One of the novels I picked up from the BookExpo America last week was The Marshal's Justice by Delores Flossen, an author I have never heard of before.  Unfortunately my following review will not be an overwhelmingly positive one.

This is the 4th novel in what appears to be a series of possible stand alones.  I am sure that reading the first three novels would probably have given me a better understanding of the characters and their relationships, but Flossen did a decent job of recapping the previous books in a natural way throughout the book.

In The Marshal's Justice, April Landis is pregnant with marshal Chase Crockett's daughter... or at least she was pregnant the last time he saw her.  April and Chase soon find themselves, and their infant daughter, entangled in a scheme involving mobsters, untrustworthy brothers, angry ex-girlfriends, murder, and mystery.  

This book will not satisfy your romantic cravings.  In fact, most of the book I was actually annoyed at the main characters rather than rooting for them to get together.  There was an unbelievable amount of tension between the characters, and not the good kind of tension, i.e. the romantic kind.  It was mostly just an uncomfortable sort of tension that had me wishing the book would simply end.

My biggest issue with the book was that things just. kept. happening.  They would catch the bad guy one moment, and the next he would escape.  Ten pages later they would have captured him again, and four pages after that he was gone again.  I find it hard to believe that these cops still have jobs with the number of times they have let criminals escape.  Flossen attempted to create a mystery with regards to who the true criminal was, but in the end her work seemed sloppy and it certainly didn't come together to create an overall successful plot.

Long story short, I would not recommend this novel.  I have one other book by Flossen and I will give it a chance in case The Marshal's Justice was simply a fluke.  

1/5 stars.