Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford Series 1) by Kelley Armstrong

I'll review Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series at some point, but I figured I would throw a non-vampire, non-werewolf, not-a-shred-of-supernatural-anything book out there for a change.

If you have a thing for Edward in the Anita Blake series, or Cormac from the Kitty and the Midnight Hour series, then you might find a few characters in this book that are also a bit interesting.

Basically, Nadia Stafford is an ex-cop turned professional hitman, and she ends up in a situation where she's working with several other hitmen. Talk about looking at the shades of gray that exist between good and bad, this is a book where the professional hitmen are the good guys.

This isn't anything like the Women of the Otherworld series. Well, except for the author not being scared to use strong, kick-ass women in this story, either. Yeah, women, plural. Not just the lead character. But they aren't so strong and kick-ass that they get on your nerves. You get to see the weak parts as well as the strong parts. Real women on the inside with normal wants and needs and hopes and fears and idiosyncrasies, who happen to be able to handle themselves in almost any situation.

As for as genre, I'd guess that this is a crime thriller. As of now there are two books planned for the series and as soon as the second comes out I'll be buying it. Kelley Armstrong says that whether she writes more after those two will depend on how well the series is doing.

Book Rating: 9




Nadia Stafford Series
1. Exit Strategy
2. Made to Be Broken (February 2009)