A former Olympic sharpshooter, hiding behind her fashion design career, suddenly finds herself embroiled in a plot to eliminate high-ranking state officials. She buries herself deeper into a hole of murder and intrigue as she struggles to prevent her blackmailer from exposing her violent past.
Consuming Fire: An Alexa Silven Novel is driven by suspense, mystery, action and unexpected twists. The main character is a model and fashion designer with a dark past involving hidden talents as a former Olympic sharp shooter. As fame of her fashion house grows, encrypted emails with dangerously incriminating information mysteriously appear, brandishing threats to expose the past she so desperately has sought to evade. Caught in a sultry web of deceit and intrigue, Alexa succumbs and serves as the personal assassin of her unknown blackmailer, secretly intending to uncover his identity and eliminate his threats, and him.
Excerpt
She wiped her forehead with the back of her gloved hand and moved out of the pew. She reached for the side door when flashing blue lights diverted her attention back to the stained glass windows. She dropped and crawled to the nearest window, impatiently leaning in for a closer look. A spotlight blazed through the window, momentarily blinding her as footsteps crept around the building. In one continuous flow, the auburn-haired beauty pulled and cocked her weapon. She crept beneath a pew as the footsteps stopped at the side door. The grip on her gun tightened and she listened attentively to the door as it jarred open, allowing an abrupt shaft of light to explosively intrude. The cop stepped inside, gun drawn. He scanned the altar with the beam of his flashlight, then swept silently but deliberately across the pews. As the door slammed shut, Alexa edged out and stood to stretch. Immediately, the door opened and the light made a final sweep. She ducked behind the solid end of the pew, focusing the Glock’s sights, but he exited and closed the door behind him.
Gun still drawn, Alexa watched until the car pulled away from the curb, flashing lights off, creeping like a cat prowling for a rat. She stayed well behind their search lights, sneaking into the shadows of the back alleys and creeping through narrow passages while avoiding streetlights and passing cars.
Professional Reviews
Paper Dragon Ink
A review of Consuming Fire by CB Hoffmann
Consuming Fire is a fast paced story filled with suspense and intrigue, a dash of romance, and religion. The story is about a sharpshooter turned fashion designer turned blackmailed assassin and that’s all in the first two chapters. It moves quickly from scene to scene, utilizing dialogue more than most stories I’ve read but it remains easy to follow throughout the conversations between characters. Alexa is a woman whose passion is designing the next ensemble for the modern woman but whose marksmanship (or should I say markswomanship) is what gets her into hot water. She gets blackmailed into using her shooting skills because of a personal tragedy when she was younger and continues because the flagging business of her fashion line requires substantial financial assistance. One quickly becomes empathetic to her plight, wondering who could be following her every move. CB Hoffmann introduces new characters seamlessly, providing just enough background to make you keep reading without giving away all the secrets at once. Her newspaper staff becomes a story all its own, unfolding new relationships while discovering more and more details of the main story, that of Alexa.
As a student of psychology myself, I find the overarching themes intriguing independent of the storyline. Trying to understand the true nature of Alexa’s relationship with her father as well as her surrogate father remains until the final pages, providing a contrast to the relationship between her and the newspaper photographer. Seeing how haunted the main character is by her past to the point of committing major crimes, yet able to connect to someone new continues the contradicting nature of her characters. Everyone in the book has something they are hiding, most for good reasons, but some for evil ones. Trying to determine which is good and which is bad is part of the fun of reading this story, while providing a backdrop for Hoffmann’s second point, how faith interacts with a person’s daily life. She intersperses Christian based viewpoints in multiple characters’ voices while maintaining the overall feel of the story. This story will keep you guessing to the end and make you root for the main characters and good to overcome evil and win the day.
Mini AnnAlysis: Consuming Fire
December 15th, 2012 | Author: Kari
From Goodreads.com:
A former Olympic sharpshooter, hiding behind her fashion design career, suddenly finds herself embroiled in a plot to eliminate high-ranking state and foreign officials. She buries herself deeper into a hole of murder and intrigue as she struggles to prevent her blackmailer from exposing her violent past.
My Thoughts:
I read this book a while back and for some reason never reviewed it. It must have slipped through the cracks. Since it’s been a while, the little details about the book have also slipped away from me, but I do remember that this book had it all. There’s mystery, intrigue, a little love, action…. you got it.
This is the first book in the Alexa Silven series. I am intrigued to read more of the books. I liked the plot of this one: A former sharpshooter now being blackmailed into killed high profile people to keep a secret of her childhood just that, a secret. But what I love about this, Alexa isn’t the only one keeping a secret.
I give Consuming Fire 4 out of 5 bookmarks and will definitely look for the others in the series to come out.
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