"Midnight in Venice" by Meadow Taylor

This is a book that you tell yourself you should stop reading. It’s a mystery. It’s romantic suspense. It’s about Venice. And a billionaire who's a brilliant concert pianist, and a race car driver and a cop. It stretches credulity, and it keeps stretching credulity.  

And you keep reading because you can’t put it down.

 

Midnight in Venice by Meadow Taylor tells the story of Olivia Moretti, a Canadian who’s moving to Venice for several months to work for a prestigious art gallery co-owned by her cousin. She runs afoul a aa police detective Alexandro Rossi, at the airport. (The prequal short story, Christmas in Venice, was reviewed here last week. It’s the first chapter of the full novel.)

 

Rossi’s wife disappeared four years before, and she’s presumed dead. Her disappearance is the primary reason Rossi joined the police force; he was previously a concert pianist and a race car driver, and he’s fabulously wealthy. (You see the credulity begin to strain here – a billionaire cop who lives like a monk in a working-class neighborhood but happens to have an enormous home in nearby Padua.

 

Carnival time is approaching, and it’s not unusual for people to begin wearing costumes. Like the surprisingly common one of the “plague doctor,” invented to “scare away” the bubonic plague when it ravaged Venice centuries before. What is unusual is for someone dressed as the plague doctor to be following Olivia around Venice. 

 

Unexpectedly, Olivia is told take a suitcase full of Murano glass to New York. The suitcase contains the glass; it also contains several bags of heroin. And detective Rossi has to wonder if the woman he’s fallen in love with is part of a drug ring. And the implications are his wife may have been involved as well. 

 

And then the story gets really crazy. It doesn’t matter, because, by this time, you have to find out what’s happening. You don’t care that the story has passed the point of believability. And just when you think you have it all figured out – you don’t.

 

Meadow Taylor is the pen name of two (unnamed) Ontario authors of historical fiction. In addition to Midnight in Venice, Taylor has also published the novels The Billionaire’s Secrets and Falling for Rain and the short story Christmas in Bruges. 

 

Related:

 

Christmas in Venice by Meadow Taylor.

 

Top photo: The plague doctor at the Venice carnival by Conor Rabbett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Christmas in Venice" by Meadow Taylor

It’s Christmastime. Canadian Olivia Moretti has just landed at the airport in Venice. She’s excited to be starting a new job with an art gallery in Venice. She speaks flawless Italian; her late father was a native before emigrating to Canada. 

Still at the airport, tired and jetlagged Olivia first runs into Alessandro Rossi of the Venice police. He wants to see identification, and he wants to know where her suitcase is. The elderly woman she had left it with momentarily is gone; the suitcase remains, but something inside is ticking. And the President of Italy is due to land at the airport.

 

Christmas in Venice by Meadow Taylor is a short story and prequel to the romantic suspense novel Midnight in Venice. It’s designed to introduce the reader both to Olivia and the policeman, both of whom as major characters in the novel. The story blends the right amount of humor, suspense, and the possibility of romance to keep interest moving forward toward the novel. 

 

Meadow Taylor is the pen name of two (unnamed) Ontario authors of historical fiction. In addition to Midnight in Venice, Taylor has also published the novels The Billionaire’s Secrets and Falling for Rain and the short story Christmas in Bruges. 

 

Prequels, and especially prequel short stories and novellas, are an increasingly popular and effective way for an author to introduce full-length novels. Reasonably priced and sometimes free, they give the reader a taste of what the longer story is about. They’re also often used as a promotional giveaway to encourage readers to sign up for an author’s newsletter. Christmas in Venice is an example of the effective use of a prequel.

 

Top photograph by Federico Beccari via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

"Falling for You" by Leanna Morgan

Artist Natalie Armstrong is returning to the town of Sapphire Lake after being away for years. She’s been living in Venice, developing what has become an extremely successful art career. When she was younger, she and her mother lived in the town with her grandparents, and their cottage and the two and surrounding area in Montana bring back wonderful memories. Her grandparents have died, and they left their cottage to Natalie and her mother. But when she returns, she finds that part of her grandparents’ cottage has been rented – her mother, who lives in Indianapolis, didn’t expect Natalie to return.

Gabe Lanigan is an author, a bestselling writer of suspense thrillers. He’s based in New York City; that’s where he grew up and where his agent and publisher are. Gabe is also a former police detective, and he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after seeing his partner and almost-girlfriend gunned down. He left the police force years before. He’s in Sapphire Lake for one reason – he’s being stalked but someone who’s staging scenes from Gabe’s books, and the threats are becoming more violent. He’s renting part of the Natalie’s cottage.

Natalie and Gabe get over their initial animosity and soon find they’re strongly attracted to each other. Natalie’s afraid that a relationship will sidetrack her career; Gabe doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready for a relationship after seeing his girlfriend die. But the attraction keeps building.

And then the stalker shows up.

Leeanna Morgan

Falling for You by Leeanna Morgan tells the story of Gabe, Natalie, and their friends. What begins as almost completely a romance story turns into a suspense story before becoming a suspense / romance story. 

Morgan has published several series, all of which are set in Montana (the author herself lives with her family in New Zealand). The series include Montana Brides (10 books), The Bridesmaids Club (four books), Emerald Lake Billionaires (four books), The Protectors (eight books), Santa’s Secret Helpers (four books), and Sapphire Bay (six books). Falling for You is the first in the Sapphire Bay series. 

The novel is stronger on the romance side than the suspense side; we don’t really learn much about the stalker and what the motivations might be. But it is a successful romance story that leaves the reader guessing until the end whether these two people will overcome their pasts. 

"The One I Trust" by L.N. Cronk

Brafford Odell Reid carries a considerable amount of personal baggage. His marriage turned into something of a disaster before it turned tragic. His wife, with some serious mental health issues, killed herself and their son by drowning in the ocean. Their bodies were never found. She arranged their deaths to look like murder by Reid, and he was suspended from the Raleigh Police Department and investigated. He was cleared only through the efforts of his mother-in-law, who was able to describe her daughter’s serious mental problems. 

He’s been holed up for a year in the basement of his best friend’s house, mourning his son and what he’s lost. He gets by on unemployment, but that will eventually end. His friends keep trying to get him to date, but he’s not interested. When he does go out, he’s quiet and withdrawn. That’s how his first date with Emily goes, until there’s a second date. He’s shocked to learn she’s interested in him; shocked that she’s 10 years younger than he is; and shocked that he’s strongly attracted to her.

L.N. Cronk

Their marry, and for a short time, things are almost idyllic. And then Emily begins to act and react much like Reid’s first wife. And he has to answer a question – does Emily need to be under a doctor’s care, or perhaps even institutionalized?

The One I Trust by L.N. Cronk tells the story of Reid and Emily. It’s a story about romance, about love, and about trust – and then it turns into a story of suspense. Not all is at it seems in Reid’s world, and never was. She lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. 

Cronk, a middle-school teacher, is the author of the eight-book Chop, Chop fiction series, standalone novels, and a historical novel, The Pirate’s Revenge, co-authored with Heather Frey Blanton. 

The One I Trust is envisioned to be the first book in a new series. It’s a gripping story, surprising in that a romance turns so quickly into rather nail-biting suspense.

“Looking for Justice” by Linda Rodante

Alexis Jergenson is a former practicing attorney who specialized in rape cases. Burned out by the work and still trying to come to grips with her own past experiences with rape, she’s left Atlanta and moved to Tennessee for a teaching job at a Christian college. Technically, she shouldn’t have been offered the job; she’s not a believing Christian. But the college needed a teacher four weeks before the start of school, and she needed to get away.

Luke Stephens is a professor at the college. He is a believing Christian, but he’s still chasing the demons of his war experience and his former wife’s unfaithfulness. The new and attractive professor is exactly what he doesn’t want or need, especially because she looks so much like his former wife. He’s also dealing with what happened to him while he was on active duty – his best friend was killed in the same explosion that caused the loss of Luke’s leg.

Linda Rodante

Alexis and Luke will be pulled together when a student is raped and becomes pregnant. The rapist is the mother’s boyfriend, and he is one despicable and dangerous character who will end up threatening the girl, her mother, and Alexis.

Looking for Justice is book four in the Dangerous Series Christian romantic suspense novels by Linda K. Rodante. The series currently includes seven books: Amber Alert, As Long as You Both Shall Live, Splashdown, Looking for Justice, Honor Respect Devotion, Pursued, and Warrior. Rodante has worked with both crisis pregnancy centers and anti-trafficking groups, and that experience infuses her fiction. She lives in Tennessee.

It’s a sweet story that could have slipped into the formulaic, but Rodante rather neatly avoids it. Instead, Looking for Justice offers a story of two people, both with broken lives, coming together to help a young girl, and finding themselves and each other.