DON'T LOOK DOWN
By Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
St. Martin's Press
ISBN 0312348126
384 pages, $24.95, Hardback
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer are both well-known authors, each writing in different genres, and I enjoy reading each one. They joined together for "Don't Look Down" and overall their voices blended quite well. As for the plot and characterization, well, that's another thing.

Lucy Armstrong makes a living directing dog food commercials in New York. When she's asked by her former husband, stunt coordinator Connor Nash, to direct the action scenes for a movie being filmed in South Carolina, she jumps at the chance in hopes of moving her career forward. On-set are her sister, Daisy, and niece, Pepper, and Lucy is looking forward to being with them. But Daisy is stressed and on something and Pepper is unhappy and isolated. When Lucy meets the male star's stunt double, Army man J.T. Wilder, she's put off by his stoicism. From the start, things go wrong with the planned stunts, and it doesn't take Lucy long to find out Wilder's working for the CIA and her ex-husband is involved in a money laundering scheme between an Irishman and a Russian. Lucy and Wilder team up to try to control an uncontrollable situation which leads to an intimate relationship between them.

There's plenty of action with this book, along with hot romance between Lucy and Wilder, but the plot seems not only meandering but confusing. The ending left questions in this reader's mind concerning secondary characters' involvement in the money laundering scheme as well as the mindset of the two main characters, neither of which seemed fazed by death and destruction. As a man who doesn't give two thoughts to killing another person, Wilder isn't a particularly likable character. Lucy's feelings for her sister and niece are nicely portrayed, but all in all, she comes across as indecisive and ungrounded.