The Man from Texas (Intrigue, 625)

Rating:
Summary: Rendezvous Magazine Loves It; So Do I!
Review: "Drugs, murder and love blend together in this exciting story and create a novel I could not put down. What makes it even greater is that this story has connections to Ms. York's fabulous Peregrine Connection books. I can't wait for her next book in this series." --RENDEZVOUS MAGAZINE

Rating:
Summary: Rendezvous Magazine Loves It; So Do I!
Review: "Drugs, murder and love blend together in this exciting story and create a novel I could not put down. What makes it even greater is that this story has connections to Ms. York's fabulous Peregrine Connection books. I can't wait for her next book in this series." --RENDEZVOUS MAGAZINE

Rating:
Summary: ROMANTIC TIMES on THE MAN FROM TEXAS
Review: "Vivid characters, clever plotting, and plenty of romance make this Rebecca York (AKA Ruth Glick) Intrigue a winner."
--Pamela Cohen, ROMANTIC TIMES

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Romantic Suspense
Review: From the crowded streets of Baltimore to the lonely and rugged terrain of Texas, The Man from Texas takes the reader on a thrill-packed jaunt from one peril to another. Who is the man who calls himself Luke Pritchard? And why are there so many people--on the right and wrong side of the law--after him? Not even he knows, but he has hired a lovely but battle-scarred ex-cop, now a PI, to help him find out. This is an exciting, non-stop read.

Rating:
Summary: Another 43 Light Street winner!
Review: From the first paragraph to the last, the newest 43 Light Street book from Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York grabbed my attention and didn't let go. If you are looking for a taut, edge-of-your-seat romantic read, do yourself a favor and order The Man From Texas. You won't be sorry!

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I usually love Light Street books. I have read them all. This one was too similar to other ones. There was already an amnesia story a couple of books ago. Now here's another one. That makes three amnesia cases involving 43 Light Street. That sounds like an epidemic to me! Someone should check that out. It reads like every other amnesiac book of this kind I've ever read. Nothing new here. I'm guessing all these people who loved it so much didn't read those other books. If they really loved it. What's with all these people posting reviews from magazines? Don't they have opinions of their own? I didn't think The Man From Texas was anything special. Took me a week to finish. I kept finding other things to read.

Rating:
Summary: Romantic suspense at its best!
Review: Rebecca York keeps getting better and better. A lot of character development and chilling suspense is packed into each of her stories. I thought NOWHERE MAN her best, until now. This book is a great amnesia-victim tale with a good old fashion Gothic flavor to it. Is Luke a criminal or a hero? If you want a dose of romance interwoven with a mystery, this is the book for you. You won't want to put it down!

Rating:
Summary: REBECCA YORK PENS ANOTHER KEEPER
Review: THE MAN FROM TEXAS will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout and is going directly onto my keeper shelves. I loved the opening lines of the book and was immediately drawn to the heroine who got stronger and stronger as the story unfolded. And Luke, wow, he's my kind of hero.

Rating:
Summary: The Man From Texas
Review: The new 43 Light Street miniseries, Mine to Keep, kicks off in "The Man From Texas," the latest by Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York. A man wakes up in a hotel room with no memory and one million dollars in cash. Picking the name Luke Pritchard out of the phone book, he seeks help from private investigator Hannah Dawson to help her find out who he really is. Former cop Hannah finds herself drawn to this stranger. But is he a hero or a criminal?

Obviously, most readers probably know the answer to that one without reading the book. Unfortunately, they can probably guess everything else about this plot before it happens too. "The Man From Texas" is the polar opposite of the last 43 Light Street book, "Amanda's Child." I started out loving that book, then ended up strongly disliking it as it went along. This time, I started out hating "The Man From Texas," then grew to like it more and more as it went along. The first hundred pages, though, were rough going. I almost didn't make it past the first paragraph:

"It was an indecent hour of the evening, at least as far as Hannah Dawson was concerned. Too early for sleep. And too late to save her immortal soul."

Her immortal soul? Sheesh. That kind of melodrama sets entirely the wrong tone for this story, and the paragraph is gibberish. Whether it's "too late to save her...soul" has nothing to do with the lateness of the hour, while "too early to sleep" does. The sentiment is obvious, but the sentence itself doesn't make sense. Within the first five pages, the heroine turned me off, when the author explained exactly why she's in fear for her immortal soul. It's simply ridiculous; she didn't DO anything! No one with any sense would be this concerned about their "soul" over what happened, or didn't happen, to her. Hannah's supposedly tragic past includes a mean, mean former lover who said some mean things to her when the tragedy struck. How mean! The problem is, I agreed with everything he said. It sounded more like the hard truth than anything mean, mean, mean, and the heroine's pouting and inability to grasp that showed what an idiot she was. We're supposed to feel bad for her that she's not a cop anymore. It's hard to feel any sympathy when she's such a pathetic mope and obviously not cut out to be a cop if she's going to let such a non-incident get to her. She also seems to be severely brain damaged (I loved when she starts out by asking Luke where he got the money. I wanted to scream "HE HAS AMNESIA! HE DOESN'T KNOW, YOU TWIT!"). Unlike "Amanda's Child," where the hero's high-handedness toward a strong heroine annoyed me, I couldn't blame Luke for telling Hannah what to do. She needed all the help she could get. Luke was fine, though the way he didn't think twice about spending money he wasn't even sure was his was ethically questionable.

The author gives too much information up front. I had the entire story figured out before Page 100, making most of what came afterward and the truth about Luke too predictable. And for those who haven't read the other 43 Light Street books (and the Peregrine Connection books), the barrage of characters from those books can be overwhelming. I can't think of any 43 Light Street book that did as much name dropping as this one. Every time they turned a corner, they seemed to find someone else. (Although, those waiting for news from certain old characters might not find them here. Most of the ones mentioned are the regular faces. In other words, don't expect to hear about anyone from "Whispers in the Night" or "Trial By Fire." I think they've been kicked out of Baltimore.)

Needless to say, I wasn't seeing much good in this story. Then something strange happened. The heroine got progressively stronger as the book went along, finally proving her worth toward the end. The cliffhangers became more natural and less forced or silly. And though the story never became any less predictable, it was at least well told, moving at a fast clip and offering some moving moments along the way. The action is high, and the sexual tension between the leads begins to feel more natural. The inclusion of past characters seems less intrusive and more fitting to the plot, and the suspense is kicked up a notch. While I'd figured out much of the storyline, seeing how it would all be resolved became more compelling as the author added more complications and danger to her characters. I did have one big question in the end and the coincidence that ties everyone together strains credibility. But if you're enjoying a book enough, things like that don't matter so much. In the beginning, I wasn't. In the end, I was.

I would give the first hundred pages two stars and the last 150 darn near five stars. That probably works out to a four. All I know is that in the beginning I was ready to give up on this series. The way the book ended, I can't wait for the next book, "Never Alone," in two months. Anyone having trouble with the beginning of this book, don't give up. It gets better.

Rating:
Summary: Better Than Nowhere Man?
Review: This book is okay but I had to laugh when I saw it was supposed to be better than Nowhere Man. What a way to set someone up for disappointment! Nowhere Man is the best Light Street book ever and this one isn't as good. It's too predictable. You know everything that's going to happen. I was kinda bored in spots. Then the action picked up. Still better than most.