Kelli Hatfield has just moved back to D.C. from NYC and is starting work on the police force the next day, so she hits the local cop bar with her friend Bronte to unwind and avoid unpacking. Enjoying a round of pool she ends up picking up David McCoy instead. David and Kelli head back to her place to enjoy a hot one night stand, and since David had noted the night before that no way was Kelli a cop (although she wasn't a cop groupie either and she was in a well known cop bar), she ends up being assigned as his new partner.
Kelli uses this as an excuse to make sure David knows there won't be any repeat performances in bed, but that resolve doesn't last long, and her dog Kojack keeps barking whenever David shows up outside her door so she can't really avoid him. It's not long before the D.C. Degenerate turns into the D.C. Executioner and the police set up a special task force to track down the serial killer. Kelli's mother was murdered when she was just 7 so she's got a special reason to volunteer for the task force, and she quickly gets assigned to work undercover in a sex shop (or "adult bookstore"), something both her father and David are against, with David going so far as to show up at the bookstore, threatening her cover. About this time it is also revealed that her father and David's father are both on the force and have a family feud going. And finally, Kelli is also investigating her mother's murder on the side. Can all these issues be resolved before anyone gets hurt, and can David and Kelli overcome their families' pasts to form a life together?
Yeah so I don't know about you but I found the last names to be a bit much - I mean sure it's fun to compare the family feud to the Hatfields and McCoys, but we could've enjoyed the analogy without the names. Despite that, this is a good book. Kelli and David have chemistry and could be good for each other. One thing that bothered me is David's reputation as a Cassanova, which we are told about but never see any symptoms of in the book - for example, David is involved with organizing youth basketball to keep kids off streets, and his brother drops by and talks about checking out the "eye candy" (the teen girls on the court) and seems surprised that David isn't doing so! Also, Kelli comes to David's apartment and comments that it's just what she'd expect from a Cassanova Cop, despite the fact that he's got milk crates as a coffee table, his walls are painted black, etc - and she doesn't seem to be sarcastic either! Anway, despite that (and a few other instances that had me scratching my head) I had a good time reading this book. Kojak is adorable too, and he's even trained to retrieve his own present from under the Christmas tree!
