Liz Stansfeld is an assistant prosecutor with the county. She has recently moved from her position as a partner with a major Milwaukee law firm to the small county outside of Milwaukee after her divorce. She has bought a house in an exclusive suburb and spends much of her free time gardening. In an entertaining opening scene Liz is planting flowers and fantasizing about how it's too hot for a wedding and all the potential disasters that can befall her ex-husband's wedding to his 22-year-old blonde aerobics instructor due to the heat. (In order to end a phone conversation with her disapproving mother, she says that she is expecting a call from a friend with a cell phone, a plant at the ceremony who's going to phone with minute-by-minute details!)

Liz is dating her boss Harry, the county district attorney, who is being considered for nomination as the U. S. Attorney in the district. She has also been proposed as a member of the county planning commission which she hopes will solidify her position in the community.

Harry assigns Liz to the case of Jeremy's murder and teams her with Jeff. Jeff is initially resentful because he prefers to work alone and believes that Liz has been paired with him because the district attorney thinks that he will make errors in his investigation that may allow the killer to get off on a technicality. (The author's law background is an advantage in some of the legal issues that arise in the story.) Liz is equally uncomfortable because she has not been part of an investigation before.

Both Jeff and Liz are people with pasts they're still struggling to deal with. They're hardworking, dedicated people who want to make a difference in their community. When they eventually achieve mutual respect and a working relationship with each other, it's quite understandable given their characters.

With Intent to Kill is one of those books that begin well and fizzle out somewhat as the story progresses. The author has done an excellent job of defining the characters and establishing the conflict. Unfortunately, she's tried to throw too much into the plot. Too many issues were raised and left mostly unresolved. In particular, Liz's future in the community is threatened because of the animosity raised by the suspect's arrest. This remains unsettled at the book's conclusion. Jeff also has some unresolved family issues at the end.

I had some difficulty with one of the central conflicts of the story. When Liz and Jeff learn the identity of the likely murderer, the community is outraged and responds with hostility. Liz's and Harry's professional futures are put in jeopardy. I have my doubts that a community's sympathies would be aimed at the suspect rather than the murdered child and his grieving father. I have read of similar crimes where the culprit's family was forced to move because of community antipathy.

Furthermore, I felt the romance theme was unnecessary. There was enough going on to keep the story moving. The romance seemed more distraction than addition.

The story, however, succeeded in maintaining my interest to the final page. In Liz and Jeff, the author has created characters a reader can come to care about, and the question of whether Jeremy's killer will get what's coming to him is absorbing enough to keep a reader's attention to the last.

--Lesley Dunlap