Port of Fear.

Port of Fear

Sherry Derr-Wille

Whiskey Creek Press

P.O. Box 726, Lusk, Wyoming 82225

www.whiskeycreekpress.com

ISBN: 1593740301 $12.95

Twenty pages into Port of Fear by Sherry Derr-Wille, I felt that the two main characters needed more of an introduction before Hugh, the ex-cop from Atlanta and Dani, the Minneapolis travel agent, meet in Florida. Still, I enjoyed being thrust into the story of a young woman running from her fiancee--a serial killing scam artist.

Dani is not the typical Grade B damsel in distress and some aspects of her bio required a good deal of suspended disbelief--like her dropping the news that she was a virgin (at the age 29) before she met her fiancee--but I accepted the fantasy and settled back to enjoy the light reading Port of Fear promised. At times I wished that the goodness of many of the characters were plausible. I especially would have liked it if there were more Hughs to go around. Atlas, there was only one--and he was on paper--but it would be great meeting a caring, sexy guy who could (and would) solve life's problems as easily as Hugh did Dani's.

Port of Fear accomplished a multiple feat. It created a sexy romance while attempting to create a thriller. From the start, Hugh, the hero of Port of Fear, assumes personal risk beyond what most people would think reasonable. He does it simply because his heat is rising, and that doesn't have anything to do with his living in the Florida heat, either. Coincidently, Hugh already knows the bad guy. His knowledge came from another time and place. Still, like Hugh, I assumed that it will be awhile before the bad guy makes an appearance and becomes physical threat in this story.

Here in lies the weakness of Port of Fear. There is no suspense. It didn't take any time at all for the bad guy to get there and get right into his awful ways. As a reader, I sat back, as the day old Hugh-Dani relationship grew, thinking that the evil guy in this story would be incapable of a quick appearance, and wondering how, once his first plan was accidentally thwarted, he would develop a second. After all, the bad guy was in Milwaukee expecting his fiancee, Dani, to be waiting for him in Minneapolis. I read thinking that a transition would develop and the evil recalculations of the bad guy explored. They weren't. Suddenly the shit hit the fan and when it did, the characters did, said and thought in ways I found unbelievable.

Still, Port of Fear made for enjoyable reading. The dialogue moved me along effortlessly. Sure, I felt that the explanations, descriptions and segues fell short but Port of Fear read like a TV serial--quick, light, and easy. As a thriller, it needed a more suspense. Still, I was able to sit sat back and enjoy it. You will too.

Isobel Kleinman, Reviewer

www.isobelkleinman.com