Dead Reckoning

 Dead Reckoning

by

Ronie Kendig

Kindle Edition, 400 pages
Published March 1st 2010 by Abingdon Press (first published 2010)
more details...
ASINB003K15NOO


About the book: (good reads)

Dead Reckoning is the story of a young woman anxious to abandon the crushing effects of her father’s espionage career only to find herself tangled in the very web of mystery and intrigue that consumed his life.

Underwater archaeologist Shiloh Blake is consumed with passion for the water and inflamed at the injustices of life, blaming her secret agent father for her mother's death. When her first large-scale dig traps her in the middle of an international nuclear arms clash, she flees for her life and is followed by an unknown man. Who is he? How is he always one step ahead? Reece Jaxon is a former Navy SEAL, who now serves his country as a spy. His mission is threatened by the beguiling Shiloh Blake as he hunts down the sources to a nuclear dead drop in the Arabian Sea. The only way to end this nightmare and prevent a nuclear meltdown is for Shiloh to join forces with Reece. Will Shiloh violate her vow to never become a spy like her father? Will she reconcile with her father? Will her trust issues destroy her chance for love? And will she allow God to help her through this ordeal?

About the Author: (good reads)

Ronie Kendig has a BS in Psychology and is a wife, mother of four, and avid writer. Her debut novel, Dead Reckoning released March 2010 (Abingdon Press), and Nightshade , Book#1 in The Discarded Heroes will release July 2010 through Barbour Publishing). She speaks to various groups, volunteers with the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), and mentors new writers. Ronie can be found at www.roniekendig.com."

My thoughts:

I downloaded Dead Reckoning  onto my kindle as a free book.  The genre was listed as Christian fiction so I was a little surprised to find that it was a mystery based on international espionage.  It was actually pretty good.  I liked the spunky main character Shiloh Blake.  Her life was a mystery at the beginning of the book that was slowly unraveled through the course of events.  I liked the fast pace, the setting and the characters.

The book did have a few weak points, the story would be rolling along--building up to a "mission".  The moment would arrive, there would be a break between the paragraphs with the next paragraph picking up at the "after mission" point.  The author left the whole mission out!  I'm not sure why she did this.

Another weak point was Christianity.  It wasn't really a main thread in the story but the author would throw it in at odd moments--it really didn't make sense to me.  The story would have been the same with or without the struggle for the main character to resolve her feelings towards God.

The Author also left the involvement of some key characters unresolved--I wanted to know more about their story.

That said, I will conclude that the story was a fun mystery/romance that I enjoyed quite a bit.  Espionage always makes a good tale.

I found this little tidbit of information in the "questions for reader's group" at the end of the book that I would have liked to read before I started so I'll put it here for any who may have this book on their TBR

"The title of this book, Dead Reckoning, is a navigational term that means the process of estimating one's current position based upon a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time and course."

The author then asks the question, "Have you ever been so intimately aware of someone that you have been able to predict their reaction, or even prevent something bad from happening?"  The reader might benefit by keeping the title information and this question in mind while reading the story.


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