Witness on the Run

Susan Cliff is a new-to-me author, and the book blurb I read, with a very different type of romantic suspense hero and heroine, piqued my interest enough to request an advance reader copy of this novel. While I didn’t absolutely love it, it certainly was quite a good, original, and entertaining read, and it gets a 3.5 star rating.

We first meet the heroine, Tala Walker, a First Nations Canadian (their version of our Native American), who is the woman on the run. She’s the wife of a law officer, Duane, a violent man who became both physically and mentally abusive since their marriage. After an especially severe beating, Tala fled with just the clothes on her back, and has been running, hiding and working in a hole-in-wall diner in Willow, Alaska, where most of her non-local customers are truckers. The owner of the diner is also a drinker, and when Tala arrives one morning to to find him in his office, sleeping off what he drank the night before, as the only waitress, she opens for the day. As the novel opens, Tala is serving coffee to 3 men, one a policeman and two other men who look like truckers but whose behavior seems odd to her–seldom do truckers ever leave food on their plates. She quickly goes out the back door to dump trash. The dumpster is enclosed by fencing to keep bears away, and then she suddenly hears a gunshot. She peeks through the fence to find that the officer she served has his gun out, there’s a victim is on the ground, and then she overhears the officer tell his accomplice to go back inside the diner to take care of things. Tala knows that he means take care of her, and she’s terrified. She’s not warmly dressed–her coat, boots, purse and ID (albeit stolen) are inside, but she manages to evade the gunman as she flees across the road to a truck-stop, where she stows away between the cab and trailer of a truck getting ready to leave, and hangs on in the hope that she wasn’t spotted by the either trucker or the shooter, who did see her flee and was following her. The truck in question belongs to Cameron Hughes, the hero.

Cameron is not your typical romantic suspense lawman hero. He used to be a police officer, but 3 years earlier, he lost his wife, Jenny. Devastated, broken, and grieving, he needs to try to outrun his grief, and not only does he become a long-haul trucker, he becomes an ice-road trucker in Alaska, a very dangerous and deadly occupation indeed. Miles down the road from the truck stop, he hears a noise in the back of his cab, and when he pulls over to investigate, he finds Tala, nearly frozen to death, in just her waitress uniform, manages to get her out of her hiding place, and brings her inside the heated cab to hopefully thaw her out and save her from hypothermia. Wanting to know more about the beautiful woman he rescued, he’s surprised by how evasive she is, and, as a former law officer, he wants to know why she risked her life, why she’s running, and Tala isn’t saying much. But during their long trip north to drop off his cargo in Prudhoe Bay, he intends to find out more about her, why she’s running, and from who.

As the miles go by, these two characters slowly begin to share the reasons why they are running, but neither is really ready to fully open up about it. Tala doesn’t trust the police for good reason, her husband was a law officer, and now Tala also suspects the shooter and his accomplice are after her too. She’s been running, hiding and living under several assumed identities for some time. Although she recognizes Cameron (Cam) from the diner, although he’s an attractive man, and she’s grateful that he saved her, she’s not looking to attach herself to another man any time soon. Cam isn’t looking for love either, but he’s kept his diner visits to a minimum ever since he realized that he was attracted to Tala. It’s an interesting and suspenseful set-up for what amounts to a chase and rescue romance novel, with danger everywhere, and a very good HEA ending.

Told in alternating narration, something I very much enjoy, with flashbacks to each of their pasts, I expected to become emotionally involved with these two characters, but for some strange reason, although the novel was interesting, well-paced, at times sexy, steamy and exciting, I never did become emotionally invested in these two characters and their story, even though I can’t quite figure out whether the reason for my detachment was the lack of emotion in the way the novel was written, or simply the way I perceived these two characters to be. I found that I liked Cam a bit more than I liked Tala, but neither character seemed fully realized to me.

All in all, I found this novel to be well-written, suspenseful, original and intermittently exciting, but in the end, I liked it well enough but didn’t love it. If domestic violence, gun violence, or graphic sex are not your cup of tea, you might want to pass this one by. However, If you’re looking for a slightly different sort of romantic suspense read, containing all of the aforementioned, I think you’ll probably enjoy this one.

As stated, I voluntarily requested an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.