The characters of everyone who isn’t Tori, Sam, or their commanding officer are left a little sketchier though even some of the plot critical characters like fellow detectives Adams and Donaldson are given only the barest scrape of personality. I like the way the relationship between Tori and Sam builds as well they have complementary skills, and once they start bonding (over escaping from armed men!), I enjoyed reading about them getting closer. It especially entertained me that some of Sam’s ideas about lesbians appeared to be quite stereotypical there’s a scene where she has to go undercover at a gay bar, and her idea of appropriate wear is mostly her normal clothes, but no bra other people’s feelings may vary!

Sam trying to work out her own feelings by talking to people and reflecting on what she wanted seemed quite reasonable and realistic to me, even if some of the responses were disappointing.

The pacing does leave enough room for Sam’s slow realisation of her own sexuality, which I appreciated a lot. I appreciate that the former is presumably to make room for everything else, and the latter is to emphasis how terrible Robert is as a partner, but taken together it seems odd. With so much going on, it’s only inevitable that pacing seems a little odd – beats of the crime that you’d expect to have more resonance or time spent on them (for example, the death of a named character who had been helping the investigation gets barely a page and is never mentioned again), and some scenes are repeated over and over (such as Tori’s emotional conflict about getting close to Sam, or Robert’s constantly contacting Samantha and saying he’ll take it to dinner.). There are a lot of moving parts to this book the relationships between both Sam and Tori and Sam and Robert, a suspected terrorist attack, drug busts, and a serial killer attacking young lesbians. Samantha Kennedy is on the surface a much more personable officer who has to juggle a new job, a demanding boyfriend, and Hunter. They are the classic opposites buddy-cop duo: Hunter is aggressive and antagonistic, burning through six partners in seven years but apparently being a good enough detective alone to make up for it. Hunter’s Way by Gerri Hill revolves around two homicide detectives: Tori Hunter and Samantha Kennedy.

Partners by Gerri Hill