Review of "One Last Look" by Linda Lael Miller

It takes a strong woman to be an attorney in the Southwestern US, and an even stronger woman to be carrying the child of a cop when you're unmarried and a devout relationship-phobe, but Clare Westbrook fills the bill. It also takes a special kind of man who can love her and support her when he's the local chief of police, but ex-homicide detective Tony Sonterra knows a good thing when he sees it. Cops and lawyers are famous for bad relationships, but there's none of that stereotypical friction here.

Sonterra has left his job as a homicide detective in Tucson to be chief of the Dry Creek PD. The body of young Jimmy Ruiz has been found brutally murdered in a manner suggesting that he was involved with the human smugglers known as coyotes. Clare follows Tony to Dry Creek, leaving her hometown practice to be an investigator for the county District Attorney's office. Dry Creek shares the most common characteristic of small towns - everybody knows everybody else, and their lives are inexorably entwined. So its almost a small matter of convenience that Clare's job lets her shadow Tony's investigation, since her battered best friend (whose rich husband has been jailed for insider trading), her housekeeper, and several of her new neighbors are intimately involved in the killings - either as potential suspects or as potential victims.

Its a smart, sassy, sexy story that you just gobble up from cover to cover. The murder plot is just background to the story of how Clare deals with her relationship with Tony, as she struggles with her trust issues and fears about her impending motherhood and marriage.