Agnes and the Hitman

This book, the second collaboration between Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, is quite a departure from the last I read. This was sort of a fluffy romance-action combo, if that makes any sense. I liked the first they did okay, but really I love the Crusie parts of them. I feel like I should probably read a Bob Mayer book to get a better sense of what part of the collaboration is his, because it seems to me like a Crusie book, only the leading male character has to be some sort of Armed Forces hero type, and there has to be a little more shooting (but not much). So hm.

Anyway, back to the story. It's about a woman (unsurprisingly named Agnes) who gets a series of dognappers and then hitmen coming at her. Along the way, her Mob-connected friend Joey brings in his (secret federal agency-employed sexy and tank-truck-like) nephew to protect her. There are a whole host of kooky characters and interesting twists, like you'd expect from Crusie, and there's early, unsentimental...relations between characters, which I'm guessing might come from the guy's input, although the scene's writing style is definitely Crusie.

I liked the book but I'd probably be careful who I recommended it to, especially because of the one part I didn't like much, which is that a lot of people died. And I'm not a big fan of the way people die in action books/movies, where it's completely peripheral and No Big Deal and the story doesn't even pause for breath as someone fairly important is mown down. But if you can ignore that kind of thing, it's a fun read. I always like Crusie's writing style, and Mayer doesn't slow her down much. Or maybe he adds to it, with the G. I. Joe characters. I'm curious to see what his writing's actually like so I can figure out how the heck these two got together to write books in the first place.