It was years ago when I first started to read Linda Howard’s books. I was hooked after reading the first one and I’ve been getting her books ever since. I just finished reading her newest book, Cover of Night.

Cate Nightingale had moved to the small town Trail Stop in Idaho with her twin sons after the unexpected death of her husband. Three years later, her bed and breakfast was doing well and her sons, Tucker and Tanner, were happy four year olds. Since the town was in a remote area, she didn’t always have guests but she had started serving breakfast for the residents of the town. Calvin Harris was the local handyman who kept up repairs around the house for Cate. Tanner and Tucker loved to watch him work and they usually got into his tool box because the tools fascinated them. One day a guest, Jeffrey Layton, disappeared and left all of his things behind. A few days later two new guests arrived and eventually pulled a gun on Cate, demanding the items Jeffrey had left behind. Cal showed up in time to run the men off. After that, Cate started to realize there as more to Cal than she had thought before. That weekend, the town was surrounded by a small group of armed men. Cal ended up in leadership position as the townspeople tried to figure out what to do.

Cover of Night started off a little slow while time was taken to introduce the characters and establish just how isolated the town was. I didn’t think that part was boring since I liked the characters. After Jeffrey vanished, the pace started picking up as more was going on. There was a fair amount of action, especially once the armed men surrounded the town and put their extreme plan into action. Violence also played a part in the book without it being too graphic. There was a lot of shooting and several people ended up injured. For the most part, when someone was injured, it wasn’t described as it happened. I have read other books that have been much more violent. Once the seize of the town started, the book really just shared how a few characters reacted when the majority of the shooting was going on. Most of the people managed to get to a safer area where they started planning together how to deal with the situation.

Linda Howard started out writing strictly romance books and then later started to add elements of mystery and suspense. Her first books were shorter and the mysteries weren’t that strong in them. She has since moved on to writing longer books with more elaborate mysteries and more suspense. The main focus of Cover of Night revolved around the men taking the town hostage. The bulk of the plan came from one man and another one added to it. It wasn’t surprising that the men did that since the book had jumped back and forth between people in the town - mostly Cate and Cal - and the armed men, so some of the planning for what they did was shared. The reasons for why the men did it were shared, so that really didn’t add any mystery. I did think that the book was suspenseful and there were several times when I didn’t know how things would work out. Some small touches of humor were added throughout the book that helped to lighten the mood. Howard has done that in many of her previous books. Several of the humorous things were added by things that Tucker and Tanner said or did. I think the funniest scene was when Cate discovered that they had taken off their clothes and were jumping on a bed to make their goobies - what they called a certain body part - bounce.

Cover of Night did keep my interest and I wasn’t bored with what was going on, but the fact that men decided to surround the entire town to get something from Cate was a little ridiculous. It just wasn’t logical for those men to do that. There was an explanation for why they did it. Basically one man was ticked off that Cal had managed to kick them out of Cate’s house and felt humiliated about that. Added to that was that they both believed that Cate still had what they were looking for and the one man came up with his idiotic plan while the other one just egged him on. I did enjoy the book overall. I just thought the men surrounding the entire town and not carrying if they killed everyone was a bit of a stretch. The plot could have been stronger. Several sections of the book focused in on the men as they were either planning or actually implementing their plan. I didn’t like those parts that much and would have preferred for there to have been more attention given to Cate and Cal and their changing relationship.

Cate met Cal right after she moved to town. Cate had been friendly to the people around town while doing small things to keep Cal at a distance. He was interested in her when he first met her, but he didn’t try to push her into starting a relationship. He knew she was still grieving and needed time. He did get nervous around her because of her feelings which amused all the other residents of the town. She started to look at Cal differently after he rescued her from the two men. They ended up in extreme circumstances once the town was being held hostage and their relationship quickly moved forward. Some readers might feel that they became intimate too fast even though they had known each other for several years. The relationship didn’t receive as much development as Howard has typically provided in previous books which was disappointing. I would have liked to have read more about the relationship since I did like the characters and the way they interacted with each other. She has a reputation for creating descriptive, steamy sex scenes that many of her fans really enjoyed reading. That really didn’t happen in Cover of Night which will more than likely disappoint the readers that like her steamy scenes. There were a few sexual situations and discussions with really only one sex scene that was descriptive in any way. It was much tamer than the sex scenes in most of her other books, so anyone that was bothered by those scenes in previous books may not have a problem with this book.

Cate and Cal were the main characters in Cover of Night. Cate was featured in more of the book so she was the most developed. She was a kind loving woman that was trying to do the best for her sons which was why she’d moved to the small town. She was able to run her own business to support her small family while still being able to be home with her sons. Cal was the handyman that did work for most of the town’s residents. He was shy around Cate because of the feelings he had for her. More about his past came out as the book progressed. The twins were happy children that got in trouble every so often. Creed worked as a guide and lived outside of town. He and Cal were friends. Neena, a former nun, ran the town’s general store and Cate’s friend. Several other people that lived around the town were briefly in a scene or two. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that they weren’t developed that much since they weren’t important characters.

I really enjoyed Cover of Night even though I was disappointed that the relationship between Cate and Cal didn’t receive some more attention. People that have enjoyed previous books by Linda Howard may also be disappointed by that since most of her others books have had more developed relationships.

I would have given this book three and a half stars if I had that option. Since I can't do that, I rounded up to four stars.

Thanks to pearannoyed for getting this book added to Epinions.

Linda Howard Book Reviews
All The Queen's Men ~ Cry No More ~ Dying to Please ~ Killing Time ~ Kiss Me While I Sleep ~ Mr. Perfect ~ Now You See Her ~ Open Season ~ To Die For ~

Recommended: Yes