*Women be crazy, yo!*

30236470What if you joined a secret society of women hunting the world’s worst criminals?
Could you push yourself to do the unthinkable?

What if you couldn’t tell anyone about your activities?
Could you hide behind all the lies?

What if your husband suspected you were having an affair?
What if he followed you on your most dangerous assignment, unarmed and unaware?
Could you keep him safe?

Phalanges “Angie” Carter is a member of a women-controlled secret society designed to hunt down notorious criminals. Blessed with long golden locks and a bikini-model body, Angie’s been at the shallow end of The Institute’s missions. She’s fed up with being the pretty faced flirt used to delay bad guys. She’s had enough of being pushed to the side while other agents get the risky, more important assignments.

Finally, Angie’s time of waiting for a challenge has ended. Her new assignment: Catch & Neutralize a group of killers involved in drugs, torture, and everything in-between. Experts at eluding the authorities, these thugs will stop at nothing to take down the beauty getting in their way – if they can find her.

Who are they? The hard part is figuring out the identity of these villains. Until then, no one is in the clear. No one can be trusted. Angie must dig deep to prove she can Catch & Neutralize these uncatchable criminals before The Institute’s alarm signifies failure…

Or something much worse.

This was a pretty fast read for me. Even though the blurb prepared me for what was to come I was still quite surprised at how Chris Grams managed to make me doubt anything and anyone the blurb indicated towards. I started doubting Angie just like her husband did… and that’s darned good writing, eh?

All these questions in the blurb will get an answer through a variety of characters and variety of events.

The book starts off with Mark, the husband’s POV chapters. He is a geneticist and his work is something that creates a threat in the book for a few of the characters.  So Mark starts suspecting that his wife is cheating on him and he takes it into his own hands to gather more proof and catch her in the act. By God’s will (no not really, just fate.. or actually, by the author’s quick thinking) he meets a woman, Laura, who may be able to help him disguise himself seeing that Laura’s expertise is in make-up, creating face masks, and such.

Then we’re going to get Angie’s POV. She’s working undercover as a secretary for a douchebag. Angie is a little firecracker. She is feisty and full of misbehavior which comes across really strong. She has to keep her true job a secret from her husband, though, and uses pretty despicable means to do so. Tut-tut…

Welcome Tiffany! Angie and Tiffany befriend each other in a restaurant but then Angie gets a message from the Institute to ‘Keep an eye on Tiffany’. Task and a half when you’ve only just met the woman. Some chats and booze later, they start playing a game of dares for high sums of money… What Angie doesn’t know however is that Tiffany has her own agenda… You got that right… Sinister! Or is it Tiffany’s fault? They end up in Tiffany’s house…and Scott is involved…sooo…

Who’s Scott?… Scott is a waiter in a restaurant Angie frequents. A horn-dog hellbent on getting a piece of Angie’s ass… is he harmless, what’s his deal? Perhaps he is a freaking predator that needs to be caught and neutralized?

As is required by thrillers, every chapter, every POV reveals new details to the story, new ideas and further curve-balls. I was thoroughly mystified and questioning everything that was happening from beginning to the end. There are some scenes of torture/bullying, mostly dealt by the female hand… So, yes, some criminals end up in the picture and it’s all just a freaking funfair of happenings but I just found the ladies actions, even though the bad guys had it coming for them, a bit childish. Surely, when you want to bring wrath upon someone, or neutralize them, then for rapists and child molesters there’s a better way to do it- don’t bully and torture them by tapping into their homophobia; just castrate, kill and stop wasting your time on scum! I did find the potato peeler an interesting choice of a torture weapon though… hahaha… BUT- this is a book, not real life, so welcome to the twilight zone! 🙂

The writing was really nice and flowy, the story progressed at high speed and there was plenty to keep me entertained. Kind of like watching an action movie. The only thing I had an ‘issue’ with was the fact how quickly the characters seemed to just fall into each other’s lives. Mark with Laura, Angie with Tiffany… everything is possible in books, though, so it’s not a major complaint of mine.

Overall- 3 ***. I liked it. A fast paced entertaining read for everyone who likes the female domination (and I don’t mean sexually here, pull your mind out of the gutter!). There is definitely a bigger plot behind the whole novel… what is this Institute, how widespread are they, what happens to the guy who was supposed to destroy all evidence of Mark’s dangerous lab creation?

*I received a copy of this book directly from the author for an honest review. Catch & Neutralize is published TODAY 15.09.2016*

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