It's not often I read a book where the heroine is an assassin which gallons of blood on her hands. But that's what Gin: a semi-magical woman who works as an assassin. She has her own code (she won't kill children or innocent people), but her life seems to consist of being paid large amounts of money to dispose of various people in the town of Ashland.
As the book
begins, we go with Gin on one of her assassination jobs - which goes wrong. Someone has double-crossed her, and she's now been seen by one of the only innocent police detectives in the whole Ashland force: Donovan Caine.
She returns from the job to find her mentor killed, his son kidnapped, and herself in the middle of a play for power by an unknown Elemental,
a person with some magical powers.
Gin has to team up with Donovan Caine, a man who wants to kill her since she assassinated the detective who was his partner. But can they work together
and overcome their strange attraction to each other - and can Gin identify who is trying to take over the city?
I enjoyed Spider's Bite. It
is pretty earthy, with a fair amount of bad language and worse behavior, and those who don't like reading about blood being shed should probably give this a miss. However,
the story is interesting, the Elemental Magic aspect
isn't too significant and doesn't detract from the overall story, and its heroine is likable. Donovon Caine isn't that easy to get to know, and this
novel doesn't resolve much between them - I assume there are others in the series - but it's a good start.