'One Wrong Move' is another thriller from Bethany House, but it's fairly the romantic suspense it claims on the back cover rather than another unexpected dip into inspirational suspense like 'Cold Threat' by Nancy Mehl, which I reviewed last month. The only Bethany House titles that I feel like I'm the target audience for are the Jaime Jo Wright gothics, because the others seem tailored to single thirtysomething Christian women and I'm precisely none of those things. However, I've got enjoyment out of a lot of them, especially when, like this one, I'm starting with book one.

I enjoyed this one too, partly because there's a broader swathe of characters, almost what I could call an ensemble cast, and partly because the mystery is a deeper one than usual, with the police procedural aspect of it well explored. Sure, we inevitably dip into prayer, because this is Christian fiction, but the first mention is on page 44 and it's not hard to read "prayed" as "hoped" over the majority of the book. So these characters are all Christians? Shrug. The only real impact of that in this book arrives after a perfect setup for a sex scene, where the lusting couple play Uno instead.

The catch to the ensemble cast is that the prologue and first chapter play rather awkwardly. I had little idea of who was talking about who, but that all resolves in chapter two and I had no problem thereafter. The primary two characters are Christian O'Brady, security expert and PI, who we first meet climbing a high rockface in New Mexico, and Andi Forester, an insurance investigator and ex-FBI lab tech. They don't know each other when this story begins, but meet soon enough when they both have to work the same robberies, mysteriously effective heists of a pair of art galleries that belong to Tad Gaiman, one in Albuquerque and the other in Jeopardy Falls, for which the series is named.

Christian is called in because he installed the security system that apparently wasn't triggered in the heist. The alarm simply didn't go off, which suggests an inside job, but nothing adds up and so he needs to investigate. Also, Jeopardy Falls is a small town, so everyone knows everyone else and Christian plays on a law enforcement baseball team, so he's even better connected. Andi is called in because Tad is inevitably going to claim on his insurance, so she's tasked with determining if it's appropriate for the company to pay out.

Of course they hit it off, because this is romantic suspense, but it takes a while for the chemistry to manifest, not least because there are a whole collection of hurdles thrown quickly in their way, starting with potential conflict of interest and the fact that someone's trying to kill them both. It only gets less likely that they'll hook up after secrets of their past are shared and connections are manifested. Dani Pettrey has fun constructing all this framework and some of it could be seen as plot convenience, but I found that I didn't have a problem with it because she took it and ran with it and built it into something more.

For one, both of them have what could be considered shameful histories. Christian's is more clear-cut but there are mitigating circumstances in that he was set emphatically on the wrong path by parents whose interest in their kids was mostly in how they could use them in their con jobs. Andi appears to be inept, something that doesn't ring true given what we've seen of her thus far, and there's real mystery in what she did. The first plot convenience shows up with Deckard MacLeod, who's both Christian's brother and business partner and the man whose investigation prompted Andi's disgrace and dismissal from the FBI. Yeah, that's a little much to swallow.

However, Pettrey takes this in an unexpected direction. What if both of them were right? What if Andi didn't botch a DNA test and didn't outright steal evidence, but was set up for both? It seems to be possible and, to clear it up once and for all, Christian effectively hires his brother to do that. The more he digs into that investigation afresh from the opposing side the more he believes her and it doesn't hurt that Harper Grace, a friend and former colleague of Andi's who still works for the FBI at the lab she was dismissed from, firmly believes in her innocence. The two team up and naturally we have a second budding romance. There's even a third one, between two characters I haven't even told you about, Greyson and Riley. Love is certainly in the New Mexico air, but it isn't a distraction from the investigations.

And I use the plural there because there seem to be two of them, the investigation into the pair of robberies from Tad Gaiman's art galleries and the investigation into the case that cost Andi's FBI job. Of course, the next plot convenience, I'm sure you won't be shocked to find, is a growing realisation that these two investigations are really one because the cases are linked. Again, it's perhaps a little much to take but it's deeply enough explored that I didn't have a problem with it at all. In fact, I enjoyed it very much.

I enjoyed the characters, who are all firmly drawn with the same brush but do exhibit differences. Christian isn't Deckard, even though they're very similar in most ways. Of course, neither is Riley, their younger sister, for obvious reasons, but she's also very similar in most ways. I guess it's hard to write romantic suspense from a Christian angle without characters blurring together in a lot of ways. It's less about what they are and what they're not allowed to be. Andi similarly isn't Harper, a delineation that's far more effective. I liked Andi but I thought Harper rocked. I'd read her book in a heartbeat.

I enjoyed the mystery, which briefly seemed straightforward but grew more complex very quickly in believable ways. Pettrey never lost track of the primary mystery, even while gradually weaving the secondary mystery into it. What I found fascinating was that some of it could have easily been written read as a hardboiled detective story, but that's an approach that just wouldn't fly for this publisher so Pettrey played it all through a particular filter that meets all their criteria. There's a distinct lack of sex, for instance, because this readership is saving that for marriage, but many of the scenes could easily have gone there, whether from the romance angle or in scenes featuring supporting characters like Tad's ex-wife. Of course, Pettrey didn't go there, but I saw it anyway.

Another way in which Pettrey seems a little different from her fellow authors at Bethany House is the fact that she writes series rather than trilogies. Sure, they all have two words in their titles, a requirement it seems, but they're not quite as generic—Alaskan Courage and Chesapeake Valor—and both those series run beyond three books. I don't know if this will too, but I'm happy to stay in the truck to see where it takes us in future books. ~~ Hal C F Astell