Crimes Against People Book 2
Sandra Brown
Grand Central Publishing
March 2026
Bloodlust by Sandra Brown is a great romantic suspense story. Besides a mystery and a budding romance between the main characters, Brown delves into grief, loss, and the father as a single parent.
“I introduced the male lead, Mitch, in the previous book, Blood Moon. I did not set out to give him his own story. I thought he was a great character, steadfast friend to John Bowie, the hero of that book. I set Mitch’s story two years later, after suffering a great tragedy with the death of his wife. I thought it would be interesting to make him a single dad with a son. At the beginning of the book, he is in a bad way. Bloodlust is a revenge plot where Mitch is seeking vengeance on the bad guys that killed his wife.”
The story opens with Mitch Haskell as a grieving detective who realizes his wife was murdered and did not commit suicide as others think. Roland Malone and the unidentified mastermind of the crime known only as Oz are behind the crime and Mitch is determined to find evidence to prove it. But he is on a downward spiral, drinking excessively to numb his pain. After going one step too far, Detective John Bowie, his best friend and now his boss, has forced Mitch to get therapy to sort himself out. Mitch realizes that he must clean himself up for his son, Andrew, who he placed in the care of his in-laws and is struggling with that decision since he wants to have Andrew living with him.
“Mitch is on the borderline of a complete breakdown, having to go to AA. Mitch is a sympathetic character as readers at the end of the first book, Blood Moon, saw his devotion to his pregnant wife. He was an army vet who went into the DEA and now is a police detective. Mitch is a tough guy with a sardonic sense of humor. He has a sensitive heart. Mitch has a path to self-destructiveness, is charming, witty, suppresses his emotions, gutsy, and unpredictable.”
He has chosen Dr. Dylan Reede as the psychologist for his mandated sessions. But from the moment Mitch breezes into her office, Dylan finds it a struggle to maintain the professional and personal boundaries that keep her own tragic past at a safe distance. Readers know that she should keep the client and therapist relationship professional, but Brown is able to pull it off because Dylan quickly realizes this is not going to work in a professional sense and tells Mitch so. Dylan is losing the battle and her patience with Mitch because he always seems to cross the red line of not working within the boundaries. She is also losing the battle with herself having noticed that there is chemistry between them which complicates the situation.
“Dylan is smart, calm, untrusting, strong-willed, self-assertive, savvy, and has self-control. She is wary of falling in love again after what happened to her husband. Regarding their relationship, he tries to use his charm to distract her, and flirts with her. She tells him she will not get rid of him being a client because he is acting as a jerk. Mitch can put her out of her element. They are off limits to each other because of her profession, yet they have this attraction and magnetism toward each other. He is unpredictable and shows up unexpectedly, taking her completely off guard. She likes order in her life, and he turns it into disorder. She rattles him because she can read him.”
As Mitch begins to close in on Oz and Malone’s operation, they’re prepared to stop him by any means necessary. And when it’s revealed that Dylan might hold the key to bringing them to justice, Mitch and Dylan’s irresistible attraction to each other may not only compromise both professionally but place them in Oz’s bullseye.
“The bad guys both are clever, cunning, and evil. Oz is manipulative, an ego-maniacal, sociopathic, and never feels guilt. Roland is unemotional, merciless, heartless, and ruthless. Yet he is very religious, that causes him to fear going to hell.”
This story had a lot of unexpected twists. The plot is kept suspenseful as Brown reveals the clues in pieces.
