What a strong woman Phoebe is - she is smart and clear thinking. I thought the way she handled the stairway incident was very good. This type of thing happens and it's good that Phoebe shows that it's okay to be a victim as long as you don't allow that to define you.

I loved Duncan. What a way to get rich! I thought he was very good with Phoebe's mother, loved the flowers for the daughter. The way he makes others a part of his family makes him a very lucky person and he seems to understand that.

All in all, I thought it was well worth the reading time and would recommend it to others. It's not a red hot romance but it's a really nice story.

This was the best novel, even the best Nora Roberts novel I've read in YEARS!
And I love Nora Roberts!

Nora Roberts can write in a variety of 'voices.' This time she writes about Phoebe MacNamara, hostage negotiator. The ultimate climax of the tale is when Phoebe is at the center of a negotiation. What brings her there is a long boring story. Explaining the ultimate direction of the book by its end is so far fetched. The characters, by and large, are somewhat simple and don't hold your interest. Where there might be a plot line to explore, it meets a dead end time after time.
Wish it had been better.

High Noon by Nora Roberts It is a mystery, action and a love story and it is also a bestseller. The main Character is Phoebe McNamara. It tells about Phoebe's childhood and the life she and her brother had with their mother when they were young, it also tell about her life and her romances. Phoebe was an FBI agent, and later became a lieutenant and a negotiator in a local precinct in her home town. Phoebe found her calling at an early age, when her mother's boyfriend trapped and terrorized them for hours. She was only seven when this happen, she tried talking to her mother's boyfriend and negotiates with him, so he can let them go. She enjoys her job as a negotiator. It's satisfying work for Phoebe and sometimes those skills come in handy at home when she deals with her agoraphobic mother. She met the handsome millionaire Duncan Swift while talking one of his employees off a roof ledge. I think that it was love at first sight when Phoebe walked into the room. Duncan could not take his eyes away from her. Phoebe had twenty five cops in a training session. There was one cop who could not stand Phoebe being in charge because she was a woman. The officer name was Arnold Meeks. Officer Meeks disrespected Phoebe. After this incident it was clear that someone was stoking Phoebe, so her intension was to find out who was stoking her. This novel is easy to follow because there is something interesting going on every page. Duncan Swift seems like such a romantic person. I loved the way he would talk to her, so soft and gentle. I enjoyed reading Nora Roberts's books because there are always romances and a gripping thriller that will have you guessing from start to finish. It is so true about Nora Roberts; she always has a mesmerizing and intriguing tale to write.

Written by: Sawyer

I'm relatively unfamiliar with Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb's work, having only read one Eve Dallas short story, and nothing written under the author's real name, prior to this book.
I thought the premise and backstory of the characters were both good, but after a while, the pacing was a bit of a problem. The 'police procedural' aspects were fine, but the romantic subplot just didn't deliver as much as it promised. I thought the action really dragged from around chapter 15 until close to the end of the story, and many of the scenes involving Phoebe and Duncan seemed repetitive. Even the conclusion lacked a satisfying resolution for some of the plot threads. Duncan's personality quirks grated on me after a while, and his rather convoluted family background added little, if anything to the story, and could have been largely, if not entirely, left out.
Roberts just seemed to pull the story's 'real' villain out of a hat in the latter chapters, after forcing us to read through a rather pointless section in which she reviews a few of her older cases(all red herrings) before finally 'discovering' who's behind it all. I prefer the villains in mystery/crime stories to have been introduced earlier, rather than have a 'surprise' character thrown in like this. Even the tie-in with the film 'High Noon' was rather forced, particularly Phoebe's attempt to equate each character in the movie with the protagonists in the story.
With all of the 'twists and turns', much of the character-driven storylines weren't wrapped up properly. It seemed like the only thing that really made Phoebe realize that Duncan was 'the one' for her, was the fact that the author was running out of pages.
It's disappointing when a book that runs for nearly 500 pages still feels 'rushed' and not completely finished.