Review – Double Cross

Twenty-nine-year-old, Taylor Pasbury had fantasized many reunions with her mother since the time her mother abandoned her and Dad twenty years ago. But she never dreamed of a reunion like this. The stylish, dark-haired woman stood in the foyer of murdered televangelist Simon Mason’s home and brightly announced, “I’m your mother,” then snapped Taylor’s picture to catch her reaction. Absent were the hugs, the tears, the contrition and forgiveness Taylor always dreamt of. Taylor felt hot tears pool in her eyes, but refused to shed them. With grim reluctance, she endured the stranger’s cold embrace.

Raised by her Special Forces father, Taylor had learned to shoot, move quickly, and take care of herself at a young age. But her father couldn’t teach her how to be a girl-she had to do that on her own. He died while protecting her when she was seventeen. Because of his sacrifice, Taylor could be described as brilliant, beautiful and self-assured, but that was only on the outside.

On the inside, Taylor’s most painful question motivated her binge drinking and kept her looking for love in all the wrong places-until she met televangelist, Simon Mason. With Mason’s encouragement, Taylor joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Today she considered herself a work in progress, although she still had an aversion to dating and to men. With training from her father, and the Secret Service, Taylor opened a successful security agency. But that painful question remained. How could her mother leave her and never look back? She couldn’t know Mason held the key to her answer.

After terrorist threats, Mason hired Taylor’s agency to protect him, his twenty-year-old daughter Kacey, and Simon Mason World Ministries. Taylor and Kacey quickly became friends, and Taylor taught Kacey how to take care of herself, like her father had taught her. At the same time Mason’s counsel helped Taylor cope with her checkered past. When Mason urged Taylor to find her mother she had tried without success. Now, this stranger who claimed to be her mother, stood just feet from her.

Thus begins Double Cross, David James Jordan’s fall 2009 release that continues the story of Taylor Pasbury begun in Forsaken. In this suspense-filled mystery, Taylor follows misleading clues of embezzlement and suicide down a dangerous trail of clues that lead to kidnapping, blackmail and murder.

The sassy dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny, the suspense is merciless, the complex, finely drawn characters sympathetic, even the ones you love to hate. But, this is more than a murder mystery or suspenseful story. It’s also a thought-provoking journey about the meaning of selfless sacrifice, illustrated by the personal and spiritual struggles of the main character. The author’s intense, suspenseful writing, filled with unforeseen plot twists and turns, leads to an unexpected, but satisfying ending that leaves the reader wanting more. This is one to put on your calendar for yourself or as a gift when it’s released in the fall.