Grab the Lapels

Dead Heat by Allison Brennan

Dead Heat was the first Allison Brennan novel that I could think of that made me wonder if I was going to get a repeat of past novels. We start with someone chained up in a basement. Been there, done that. It’s a thirteen-year-old boy named Michael in Texas near the Mexico border. Okay, this is new. A little girl who lives in the house frees him because she is worried about him. Also new. But then the boy avoids the police despite knowing they can help him. Ugh, we’ve done that! Twice! Yet this kid is avoiding police because he has a revenge plot: go to Mexico and kill “the general,” who is the ringleader of all the evil perpetrated against Mexican-American boys like Michael.

Let’s back up. Lucy Kincaid is finally an FBI agent, and she’s been stationed in San Antonio, Texas. Boyfriend Sean Rogan goes with her, they buy a house, things seem domestic. Sean’s a bit bored now that he doesn’t have constant work through the security agency run by Sean’s brother DUke and two others. Now, he’s trying to create his own contacts, but it’s slow going. That’s the price of independence, I suppose!

Lucy is involved in a major sting called Operation Heatwave: “More than 150 police officers and federal agents from every major law enforcement organization coordinated to serve active warrants on violent criminals in the largest sweep to date in San Antonio, Texas.” Something I hadn’t put together, but Lucy may have been chosen for the San Antonio FBI location because she speaks Spanish. Her mother is a Cuban immigrant. Therefore, when the squad busts into one house to find two targets from Mexico, they find instead the targets’ sister had been harboring fugitives, plus and her two children (one of whom released Michael from the basement). Lucy is able to talk to the kids.

Allison Brennan shows us different sides of Lucy during her interactions with the children. Although we know Lucy cannot have children, she values and respects them, and she and Sean have discussed a future with adoption in it. Therefore, she’s not a mother, not yet anyway, but is written both strong and maternal.

Another new aspect to the novel is that instead of working solely with police or FBI, Lucy is partnered with a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent. The DEA deals with drug trafficking, which means whole organizations of criminals and a lot of money at stake. The DEA agent warns Lucy, “For agents, the FBI is safer than most law enforcement organizations. Working for the DEA is probably the most dangerous.” Has Lucy been protected by her role doing forensics, profiling criminals, and interviewing suspects versus more sting operations like the DEA?

The truly exciting part of the novel comes when Lucy feels the boy, Michael, is going to be found in Mexico and murdered by “the general.” Another child’s life is at stake, and eventually a DEA agent’s, too. Instead of following protocol, Lucy calls her brother-in-law, whom she’s never met, the only and only Kane Rogan. Kane was the main character in a trilogy Allison Brennan wrote before the Lucy Kincaid series, so as a reader, I’d never met him, either. He’s a mercenary crawling around in Mexico and South America, helping the U.S. government outside their jurisdiction, but he’s not exactly friendly. In fact, Kane warns Lucy not to trust Michael at all, as young boys are often broken down and rebuilt into murderous soldiers for drug cartels. Dead Heat goes full-on cinematic when Kane gets involved, and I had a blast reading how Kane, his partners, Lucy, and Sean (“Little Rogan,” the mercenaries call him, much to his displeasure) handle things in Mexico.

While I felt ambivalent in the beginning, Allison Brennan pulled out another banger and got me more interested in going back to read her older trilogies to learn more about Sean’s and Lucy’s siblings (so many siblings), all of whom have cool, high-octane jobs.

13 comments

  1. Snake! I thought you were dead! 😱 It’s pretty satisfying when it hits the fan and someone has to call in the loose cannon. It sounds like there are whole other worlds in this same setting, so even a familiar plot could get refreshed into something epic with the right characters. He’ll have to drop back in at least once or twice in future books. Now the question is just when Kane is going to get into a scrape and need Lucy to be the x factor badass that will bail him out of a tight spot. Maybe not the next book, but it has to happen. Them’s the rules!

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    • I didn’t know them’s the rules, and now I’m twice as excited! Also, I love that you quoted a Kurt Russell movie to me when you know how I feel about Kurt Russell. Thanks for going on this series ride with me ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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  2. More siblings! Do either of them have a sibling who’s like an accountant or something boring? (Though maybe then there could be a book about dramatic tax fraud!) This does sound exciting and I’m impressed that she keeps opening up the world and creating new dramas!

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    • Both Sean and Lucy have, like, 6 siblings. Not one tax accountant, but that reminds me of a fantasy series I love in which a person who is the most dangerous hunter of demons is introduced to us as a tax accountant 🤣 I think she was trying to avoid danger or something. I can’t remember.

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  3. As I’ve said before, I do enjoy your post on these books and can imagine enjoying them. This one interests me because of having lived in Southern California so being a bit familiar with the America- Mexico challenges. I’ve been to Texas and spent time in San Antonio which we found a great city so the setting would be fun to read too. I love how you teased out what was similar and what was different in this book. I also love Nick’s comment that “them’s the rules”.

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    • Isn’t Nick just a treat? He’s been following along with my review for this series like it’s his job 😂 I swear he’s noticing things I didn’t! What blows my mind about the US -Mexico border concern is that my local politicians, the ones who represent just my district in Indiana, email me about their promise to fight against illegal immigration. Like, we’re thousands of miles away, and you represent a tiny area? Maybe focus on local issues??

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      • He is a treat. I’m loving his engagement with the series. And yes, I hear you re your local politicians. Sounds like they are trying to ride what they believe is the zeitgeist to maintain popularity rather than do their job.

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  4. This does sound fun, although I hesitate to use that word when the book involves children being chained up. But hopefully no kids are explicitly harmed in this novel, at least on the page?

    As a Canadian, Texas has always seemed like a bit of a lawless place to me, although admittedly, living in Alberta, we have also been referred to as the “Texas of the North” hahah

    I say “lawless” because I was under the assumption that many people have guns there, and aren’t afraid to use them? This could just be a rumor though

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    • Loads of guns but legally kept 😬 Austin is really liberal, and I swear Texas is going to go blue in my lifetime. It’s so on the edge right now. What makes Alberta the Texas of the North??

      To answer your question about the book, I don’t recall any children being harmed directly on page. We know some are sick and some die, but we don’t read that as it happens.

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      • two reasons we are known as the texas of the north – the oil in the ground, and the fact that Albertans are fairly conservative compared to the rest of Canada. Actually, there’s a movement right now where some Albertans actually want to separate from Canada which is obviously…ridiculous LOL Where we gonna go???

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