Kill and Tell

Last night I finished Kill and Tell by Linda Howard.

Karen Witlaw's Mother has just passed away. In an effort to ease the grief, she moves, packing up all of her mother's belongings - including a mysterious package from Karen's transient father that had arrived after her mother's death.
She's jsut begining to settle back into a rythm when detective Marc Chastain from New Orleans calls. Karen's father has been killed and she needs to come to NOLA and identify the body.
Marc doesn't like Karen. Her father had been living on the streets, and she seemed like just the sort of uncaring woman who would leave her Vietnam Vet father out on the streets instead of having to deal with his problems. But he's wrong. In an instant, Marc realizes how affected Karen is by all that has happened, and how much he wants to be the one to comfort her.
Marc begins courting Karen, who's not warm and trusting towards most men, but Karen turns to him as her only option when the man who had her father killed goes after her to finish the job.
Now it's a race to find the package her father had sent before his death and figure out who's trying to have Karen killed before they succeed.

Very good book, as are all of Mrs. Howard's. The suspense was good and although I had an inkling what was going on, the end was still wonderful. There are some good action scenes and the heroine is very well developed. I related well with the heroine and her background and some of her views, which made me enjoy this book all the more.
The hero, Marc, is totally drool worthy! Between his looks, his souther hospitality, and his Noawlans drawl, he's someone you want to read about.
My only problem with this book, there are a LOT of subcharacters. I'm all for supporting characters for enhancing the plot, and I love when we get some scenes from their point of view, but if I set this book down for too long I had to look back to remember who was who while I was reading.
Overall, I definately recomend this book, although I definately also recommend reading it when you're fully alert. My groggy mind needed a little caffiene to keep up with all the characters.
I actually became very interested in one of the subchatacters, John Medina. He appears again in Howard's All the Queen's Men as the hero. I've yet to read this book, but will definately be adding it to my TBB (to be bought) list! All of Linda's books are keepers!