HIDDEN STEEL - Doranna Durgin
Five Star
ISBN: 1-59414-681-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-681-7
July 2008
Romantic Suspense

San Jose, California - Present Day

When she first wakes up, groggy and confused, she pieces together enough to come to the conclusion that she’s in a hospital, and her name might be Mickey. The next time she comes around, she realizes it’s not a hospital but a private room with hospital equipment. Mickey isn’t her name, but apparently she was given an experimental drug that was supposed to have the effects of a Mickey Finn, and she’s handcuffed to the cot she’s lying on. The woman who comes to “question” her makes it clear that survival depends on giving the right answers, but still confused and with large gaping holes in her memory, Mickey doesn’t know the answers. All she knows is that Mickey will serve as a name until her real one comes to her...and she has to escape.

Mickey does manage to get away and knows that she has to get off the streets or she’ll end up back with her captors. Salvation arrives when Mickey collapses at Steve’s Gym.

A man who teaches street fighting and self defense to the homeless and underprivileged, Steve Spaneas takes one look at the woman passed out on his floor wearing bloody scrubs and assumes she’s off her meds and AWOL from a nearby clinic. After she wakes up and has some food in her, she’s stronger but offers no information other than her name. During a self-defense class, though, Mickey proves that she knows how to take care of herself as she comes close to delivering a fatal blow, but checks herself just in time. Who is this woman with her scary patches of memory, killer instinct, and her urgent desire to find Naia and protect whoever -- whatever -- Naia happens to be?

From the moment Mickey wakes up, HIDDEN STEEL is a pulse-pounding suspense with Mickey desperate to find out who she is -- and just as afraid of who that person may be. Her instincts tell her to escape and stay hidden from both her pursuers and the authorities. Those same instincts warn her that the slow-moving vehicles patrolling the neighborhood are looking for her, and staying with Steve will bring trouble to his doorstep. Each new thing she learns about herself, and each memory she regains, only serve to convince Mickey that she might be better off not remembering.

As Mickey struggles with her hidden past, and she and Steve try to avoid the people after her, another young woman is in danger. The daughter of a foreign president, she’s trying to help her father and her country from the threat within, but suddenly this naïve but intelligent young woman thinks she might be in over her head.

Full of mystery and interesting characters, HIDDEN STEEL will grab readers from the beginning and is a book you don’t want to miss.

Jennifer Bishop