This novel has some flaws but I enjoyed almost all of  it anyway.  First – what are those two neighbor guys drinking?  Is it milk (which one wipes from his mouth),  coffee (which is spilled during the ensuing melee) or beer,  as one of the characters reports later?  –  lol

The plot feels a bit contrived sometimes – especially towards the end.  And the women characters are so demanding – they scream moer and more questions – (the kind which will only lead to even more questions).

Mean Streak
by Sandra Brown
2014/ 496 pages
read by Jonathan Davis  11h 51m
rating – A- / suspense-thriller-romance

But those are such rather minor issues and I easily overlooked them because of the originality of the main plot line (to me anyway),  the characters are well developed and  the tension is of the page-turning and oil-buring variety.

Finally,  but worst for me,  the story has a streak of romance  which would normally just turn me right off.   For some reason it was okay in this case because the suspense-thriller aspect overcame it – up until about 3/4 through anyway.   Even the graphic sex was okay – nicely done, actually (although only one briefer scene would have been plenty for me).    But overall,  it added to the story in some character developing way.  (Yes,  it was a bit trite,  the whole romance part smacks of cliche’d trite,  so much I kind of guessed the ending at about 3/4,  but … sigh…)

Emory Charbonneau, a very successful pediatrician goes for a solo training run  in the mountains of North Carolina.  As a marathon runner she’s confident and enjoys running alone.  But she  disappears up there and then the fog sets in.   Besides,  by the time her husband Jeff, who is otherwise occupied,  reports her missing, the trail has grown cold – and the man is so arrogant the police suspect him of something.

Meanwhile,  the unconscious Emory finally wakes up in a strange mountain cabin with a man who refuses to tell her anything about himself – even his name.  It’s very suspicious – very tense as she tries to escape.

Then the seriously  awful neighbors pull some tricks and a young girl needs help desperately.  What’s a good doctor to do?  What can she do?   The twists continue – and continue.