The Investigator by Anna Hackett Series: Norcross, #1
Published by Amazon Digital Services, Amazon Publishing, Anna Hackett on 15th September 2020
Pages: 167
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It should have been easy. Stay away from her boss’ hot brother.
Museum curator Haven McKinney has sworn off men. All of them. Totally. She’s recently escaped a bad ex and started a new life for herself in San Francisco. She loves her job at the Hutton Museum, likes her new boss, and has made best friends with his feisty sister. Haven’s also desperately trying not to notice their brother: hotshot investigator Rhys Norcross. And she’s really trying not to notice his muscular body, sexy tattoos, and charming smile.
Nope, Rhys is off limits.
Investigator Rhys Norcross is good at finding his targets. After leaving an elite military team, he thrives on his job at his brother’s security firm, Norcross Security. He’s had his eye on smart, sexy Haven for a while, but the pretty curator with her eyes full of secrets is proving far harder to chase down than he anticipated.
Luckily, Rhys never, ever gives up.
When thieves target the museum and steal a multi-million-dollar painting in a daring theft, Haven finds herself right in the middle of a deadly situation. With the painting gone and Haven in danger, Rhys vows to do whatever it takes to keep her safe, and Haven finds herself risking the one thing she was trying so hard to protect—her heart.
It isn’t often that Anna Hackett has her writerly chops planted firmly on earth but the Norcross series promises that, with hot men in suits—former military, but now running their own businesses, getting involved in several suspense plots along the way. As an RS reader, it’s familiar ground; as a Hackett fan, I had both tingles of excitement and my own personal reservations about this.
But the long and short of it is, ‘The Investigator’ didn’t exactly work out for me, having fallen roundly into the clichés that tend to abound in such a genre: a gruff talking former manwhore (with some OW drama) who seemed to like the use of the words ‘mine’ and ‘baby’, the action scenes that comprised the hapless heroine getting into waves of trouble and having the hero ride to her rescue, predictable dialogue, and the wave of instant lust/love that weirdly keeps the hero chasing after a woman who frankly didn’t seem too much of a standout protagonist. I couldn’t quite believe in Rhys and Haven as a pairing as a result and found myself more interested in the whole cast of characters that Hackett wrote into this first book, even if there isn’t much detail yet on how distinguishable these Norcross men and their associates really are apart from their being suited, hot, tattooed and alpha.
‘The Investigator’ begins with art heist and sort of gives an idea of how this series is going to go on—with shady underworld dealings and events that shake up the male protagonist’s worldview sufficiently that he is now motivated to move for the woman he’s always had his eye on. I wish I had a better time with this but I’m keeping my fingers crossed through, that it’ll just get better from here.
