SATAN'S RING

Inspirational suspense novels are just beginning to cook in the CBA market, but this tale offers little to satisfy an audience hungry for quality books in the genre. In racially diverse Bannerman County, people of various ethnic origins are being systematically eliminated by the Brotherhood of the Ring, a white supremacist alliance led by the Shepherd. It's not long before state police criminal investigator Andrew Chapman is assigned to investigate the Brotherhood's brutal hate crimes. The chaos begins with the murder of three Nicaraguan immigrants and continues as the governor suffers an "accident," an Argentinian premed student is killed, beatings are dished out, cars explode and a drive-by shooting occurs. Andrew's investigation mixes him up with comely blonde prosecuting attorney Jordyn Phillips, and a syrupy romance ensues. Andrew confides to Jordyn that he has a past affiliation with the Brotherhood, and it's not long before they're both drawn inexorably into the final showdown, where murder is attempted on a grand scale. The book's plot is its strongest attribute, but the story suffers from repetitive and verbose prose, awkward sequencing, contradictions in the text and stiff dialogue. The characters, especially Jordyn, fall into stereotypical behaviors (an early scene features a trembling Jordyn in a semifetal position while Andrew shoots it out with the bad guys). At a time when inspirational suspense novels are just coming into their own, this one is a disappointment. (July)