Defenseless by Elizabeth Dyer

Narrated by Aiden Snow

I recently read Elizabeth Dyer’s, Relentless, which is her second novel and also the second book in her Somerton Security series, which features the exploits of the members of a private-security-firm-cum off-the-book black ops unit headed up by former Delta Force operative, Ethan Somerton. I enjoyed the story and the writing and liked the manly bickering that went on between Ethan and Parker Livingston, his genius tech guru, so I decided to backtrack to the first book in the series, in which Parker is the hero. Given Aiden Snow is a narrator who has been on my radar for a while (but to whom I haven’t yet listened), I opted to pick up the audio of Defenseless rather than to read it. It’s the author’s début novel, but while it’s not without its problems (there are pacing issues and it’s a bit introspection heavy in places) it’s an enjoyable story and I’m going to be keeping an eye out for more of her books.

Former marine and Somerton employee Georgia Bennett isn’t best pleased at the idea of pulling a seventy-two hour babysitting duty for some nerdy app developer. She tries to wriggle out of it by reminding her boss that she only works protection duty for female clients, but Ethan is adamant and won’t let her off the hook. Telling her that Parker Livingston is a difficult client who insists he doesn’t need protection and who has managed to ditch every bodyguard Ethan has assigned him is the last thing Georgia needs to hear, especially as Ethan makes it clear that, given her track record for pissing off clients, this could well be her last chance to retain her job.

Parker is a genius who’s been working for the government in one way or another since he was seventeen and is frequently called upon to advise on issues of technology and national security. As the designer of an incredibly advanced software program that is able to perform complex analytical processes and predict eventual outcomes – and do it in hours rather than the years it would take humans to do the same tasks – Parker is part of the decision-making process surrounding covert military operations but has recently begun to notice some procedural anomalies. He’s taken his concerns to Ethan, and given the nature of the work Parker does, it’s more than possible that someone on the inside is responsible for the inconsistencies – and Ethan is taking no chances. He’s managed to get Parker to agree to a protection detail, but bad weather has delayed the person originally assigned, hence the need for Georgia to step in.

Georgia, stuck with a client who doesn’t want protection and a job she doesn’t want, expects a difficult assignment. What she doesn’t expect is to discover that said client is drop dead gorgeous, funny and oddly yet endearingly charming, in spite of the know-it-all smart-assery and irritation at being saddled with an unwanted bodyguard. She’s starting to think that maybe the next three days might not be so terrible – assuming Parker’s dryly sarcastic manner doesn’t piss her off too much – when the shit hits the fan and she and Parker receive an urgent encoded message from Ethan telling them to run. They’re on their way out of Parker’s loft when they are attacked by a masked assailant clearly intent on murder; and when, after he’s taken down, he’s revealed to be a former colleague of Parker’s, it’s impossible not to make the connection. Someone Parker works with wants him dead.

Elizabeth Dyer writes with a sure hand, creating a couple of engaging, well-rounded central characters, an intriguing, suspenseful plotline, well-written action set-pieces and steamy love scenes. I really liked the role-reversal element of the set-up, with the kick-ass former marine bodyguard being a woman, and the man as the “damsel in distress”; and also enjoyed the way we’re shown that there’s much more to both characters than those assigned roles would suggest. The death of her older brother, Will, has left a huge hole in Georgia’s life and heart, and she’s been retreating emotionally ever since, having decided getting close to anyone is just not worth the potential for pain. Parker is a refreshingly different sort of hero (I’m a goner for a hot nerd in glasses!); highly intelligent, supremely confident and not particularly modest about it, he’s hiding vulnerabilities beneath that egotistical exterior, and is possessed of a quiet inner strength the extent of which even he isn’t fully aware of.

As I said at the outset, though, the book isn’t without its flaws, which are mostly related to the pacing. There are places in the middle where things slow down to the point of stodginess, and there is too much introspection and internal monologuing, sometimes during dialogue – which meant that by the time the conversation resumed, I’d forgotten what it was about – and also during action scenes, which really dispelled the tension and detracted from any sense of urgency the author had created. And while the high-stakes dénouement to the suspense plot is very well done, the resolution of the love story is a bit of a let-down. There’s an HEA, and Parker and Georgia have great chemistry, but I’m not a fan of romances in which it takes a third party to knock some sense into one or both of the characters and throw them together, rather than their coming together on their own.

I haven’t listened to a narration by Aiden Snow before, but I know he’s a very experienced performer and that he’s narrated a lot of fairly gritty contemporary romances. Those aren’t really my thing, which is why I was pleased to see his name associated with this series, as it finally gave me a chance to listen to him. I knew going in that he has a very deep, resonant voice – we’d be talking basso profundo if he were an opera singer! – and I admit I was a bit worried as to how he’d voice the heroine and any other female characters, because to pitch them too high would just sound silly. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen, but it seemed to me that it took him a little while to find his stride with his ‘Georgia’ voice. Early on, there were times there was little differentiation between her and Parker and I had to rely on dialogue tags to work out who was speaking, but this changed as the listen progressed and soon Georgia’s dialogue was more easily discernible. His portrayal of Parker is very good though, expertly capturing his cockiness, his dry humour, his insecurities and his passionate determination to do his very best for the people he works with. There are a handful of secondary characters in the book, but the only one who appears with regularity is Ethan, who is easily distinguishable from Parker, although on the rare occasion there were more than two or three men in a scene, I again found myself reliant on the dialogue tags. That said, these were characters who appeared in only one or two scenes, so it’s perhaps not surprising I wasn’t able to identify them all aurally.

Even though it could have done with a bit of editorial tightening, Defenseless is a well-plotted tale of romantic suspense that gets the balance between those two elements just about right. Parker and Georgia are complex, intriguing characters, and Ms. Dyer clearly knows how to ramp up the tension in terms of romance and plot. I enjoyed the listen on the whole, and certainly plan to pick up more books in this series.

Caz