Review: Judgement Day by Wanda Dyson

Judgment Day opens with a quotation from John Connor, leader of the human resistance in the Terminator movies: “It was never about avoiding judgment day. It was all about surviving it”. I’ve always loved sci-fi books and movies, so this had to be a good start! (Don’t worry – this is not a sci-fi book. It is Christian fiction, although the Christian element is quite understated and not at all preachy).

Suzanne Kidwell is the presenter of a TV crime show, Judgement Day. She believes she won’t “get anywhere in life unless she was willing to be a little ruthless, a little mercenary, and [have] a whole lot of ambition”, but it seems that no everyone agrees with her, as her producer is giving her trouble about not sufficiently checking her sources, and her boyfriend, surgeon Dr Guy Mandeville, is pressuring her to give up her career and get married. However, this little problem is soon sorted when Guy is killed while driving Suzanne’s car – the car loses control and explodes, and Guy’s distraught mother has Suzanne removed from the funeral service.

Suzanne’s life then goes from bad to worse when she wakes up one morning to the sound of the police banging on her door – and a dead body beside her. Needless to say, she is charged with murder, and the police consider the investigation closed. To prove her innocence, her attorney refers her to the private detective agency run by close friends Marcus Crisp and Alexandria Rachelle Fisher-Hawthorne (Alex). Oops. Suzanne and Marcus were engaged in college, the relationship did not end well, and Alex is initially hostile towards Suzanne and reluctant to take the case because of this history. But there are indications that Suzanne the victim of a conspiracy, and this persuades them to take the case (assisted, strangely, by a sizeable advance from Willard Mandeville, Guy’s father). What follows is a high-octane thriller as Marcus and Alex work with Suzanne to solve the mystery before anyone else gets hurt.

While Judgment Dayis a thriller rather than a romance, there is a strong thread of romantic tension between Marcus and Alex running through the novel. They have been friends since college, business partners for six years, and somewhere in that they have each developed romantic feelings for the other, but neither want to take the risk of revealing or acting on this. I thought it was extremely clever how Dyson managed to convey this tension without spelling it out in words, and without wanting to give away any spoilers, the ending was more than satisfying! Overall, a very enjoyable novel, and I would certainly be interested in reading more about Marcus, Alex and their PI work.

Thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah and Blogging for Books for providing a free ebook for review.

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