Officer on Duty 

(Lock and Key #4)

by Ranae Rose

Life is tough but Sergeant Jeremy Connor is tougher. Riley County, North Carolina is recovering from a year of hell when devastation strikes again, and the Sheriff’s Department is working the frontlines. On top of keeping the community safe, there’s Jeremy’s greatest responsibility: raising his daughter. Alone.

Seeing local women turn up dead is enough to shake any father, even a veteran sheriff’s deputy. After years of loneliness, the timing couldn’t be worse to let another woman into his life. But he’d have better luck resisting gravity than resisting Lucia Ramirez, the first to prove there’s still a heart beneath his bullet proof vest.

For the first time in over a decade, serving and protecting isn’t enough to satisfy him anymore. But someone to love means someone to lose…

Book 4 in the Lock and Key Series

Just like all of the other books in the Lock and Key series, I really enjoyed Officer on Duty.  It had just that right amount of suspense to offset a sexy love story.

The romance portion was sweet, well developed and realistic.  My only complaint is that I didn’t completely understand why Jeremy didn’t think that he was relationship material.  I get that his wife left him and their newborn daughter when he was quite young but I would have thought he would have gotten over that in the dozen years since then.  I don’t know if there was more to their story that we weren’t given or maybe it was a little too subtle for me (I can be a little oblivious to undercurrents – which is one of the reasons I hated dissecting stories in English class).  If he’d had a few more bad experiences or there was more info on his marriage maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me.  As it was, he would start in and I thought “whatever, Jeremy, you are a hottie in your uniform with a big heart and smarts to boot.  Who wouldn’t want a guy like that?”

Besides being sexy, caring and intelligent, he also has a deep feeling of responsibility for his community and those in his life.  It’s a great thing to have not only in a police officer but also in the man in your life.  Which means that once he got over himself he turned into a great boyfriend 🙂  And Lucia was great.  She’s fun, caring, and recognized a good thing when she saw it – she’s patient and willing to wait for Jeremy to get his act together … which is good because that man is HOT in his uniform, and out of it.

I really enjoyed the slow build for the mystery.  We were given the first part of it pretty much right away and then got glimpses into the killer as we move thru the story.  It made for a compelling, albeit quite cracked, bad guy.  You don’t like her but you kinda understood where she was coming from (in a crazy pants kind of way) – why she was the way she was and how she came to this point in her life, which is important to a good story.  And her actions reached into Jeremy and Lucia’s lives, leaving a big impact.

When I finished Officer in Pursuit, I was excited to see what Rose would do for Jeremy and she doesn’t disappoint.  She gave our true-hearted deputy a touch of danger and a good women to help him.   I’m very sorry to see the series end but I’m ready for whatever Rose has in store for us next.  Looks like she’s got something in the works with the first book in her South Island PD series debuting this fall.  I’m sure it too will be full of sexy guys, strong women, intrigue, heat and heart.

(Oh for those that are new to the series, you can start here.  The characters from earlier stories make and appearance and there are some references to previous plots but it isn’t a big deal.)