Cut & Run by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Even if apparently this is the classical bad cop/good cop theme, actually in Cut & Run there is no good cop at all; both FBI agents Zane Garrett and Ty Grady have ghosts in their own past, and no one of them is a by the book agent.
At first glance, Zane seems to be the perfect FBI agent, all rules and restraining, and instead he is a recovered alcoholic with a problem to tighten another bond after the death of his wife; Ty is a unleashed dog, former-marine with posttraumatic syndrome who don’t take well orders. They are both bisexuals, actually I think their Kinsey scale leans more on straight than gay, but when they are throw together in the investigation of a very particular serial killer, they find out they click together better than expected.
I think one of the best character of this story is Burns, the boss of both Zane and Ty, who chose to put them together instead of firing both of them; instead of picking a good and bad to balance one another, he took the risk to put two self-destructive men in the same team to see if, instead of giving each other the final blow, they could find a way to exit to the black tunnel they begun.
I think the sexual relationship between them is their own way to help each other; sure, it’s passionate sex, and they like it a lot, but it’s also a way to nurture each other back to a some sort of mental sanity. Zane and Ty are too burned to trust someone else out of their bond, and if they need to find a balance to work together, that balance has to be total, in and out of work. Moving the working relationship to a personal level is the only way to stay safe and sound, they can allow only one behind their protective shield, and if that one is the working partner, than it will become also the life partner.
Cut & Run itself is a long novel and it’s only the first in a long series; it will be interesting to see how the fragile balance they reached will work in the long time, but in a way I think the balance seems fragile only to an external eye, for them, it’s stronger than steel.
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=1495
Amazon: Cut & Run
Amazon Kindle: Cut & Run
Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (September 29, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 193519223X
ISBN-13: 978-1935192237
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