Review: Undetected by Dee Henderson

Classic Dee Henderson

Gina Gray is a certified genius. She entered college at fourteen, has multiple advanced degrees, and has just broken up with her boyfriend. She is twenty-nine and wants to be married, so heads to Bangor submarine base, where her older brother is based, in the hope he can introduce her to a good man. In the meantime, she’s got an idea about a new way for submarines to use sonar …

Forty-year-old widower Mark Bishop is the captain of a submarine, one of a small number of men responsible for the deployment of the US fleet of nuclear submarines. He’s friends with Jeff Gray, another sub captain, but isn’t interested in Gina. She’s too young for him, but she’s brilliant, and needs a friend on base as she works on her revolutionary idea.

I very much enjoyed Undetected. It had a strong Christian thread, good characters (the only faults with Gina and Mark is they are possibly too perfect), a solid romance, and a thought-provoking suspense plot as Gina works to improve the safety of US submarines (this was timely, as I was reading it during the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. I thought if only this were true, the technology could be used to locate the plane far more quickly).

Initially, I was worried about the age difference between Gina and Mark, but I think it works in the end. There was another subplot (which isn’t mentioned in the blurb, so I won’t spoil it), but would say I didn’t think it added to the plot, as there was never any doubt how the subplot would play out in the end.

I wondered after Full Disclosure and still wasn’t entirely convinced after Unspoken, but I think Undetectedis almost back to the classic O'Malley and Uncommon Heroes style Dee Henderson’s fans know and love. I still think it’s books are over-long, has too much technical information, and there are a couple of glitches in the writing (she mentioned quietly), but those are my only real problems. The suspense is gripping, and the romance builds nicely, to the point where I really believed it. Excellent romantic suspense.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free book for review. You can find out more about Dee Henderson at her website (which has to be one of the most boring author websites I’ve ever seen. I guess it shows that good books sell books, not fancy social media.).