Guilty Indulgence: Cut & Run Series Review

Happy New Series for Me and YOU!

I just finished the Cut & Run Series by authors Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux! I am not even sure how I want to write my review for this one so I guess that best way is just to let my thoughts come out on print because hey – we are all friends here. When I got the “You need to read this series next” – I had faith, after all, my book club hardly ever steers me wrong (especially because who knows you better). Faith is a great thing because I was hooked from the start of Cut & Run. The descriptions below are right on the money and tell you about the awesome realistic crazy people plots. This ranges from serial killers and bombings to international smuggling and more murder. The stories themselves, without our two main characters, are still great. It isn’t the standard “oh, I saw that coming” type of mystery/suspense either. So I would by the books for the plot alone.

But…. let’s throw in two strong alpha males, Ty and Zane. Both of these characters have a ton of emotional baggage that they need to work through and it isn’t going to take one book to get through it all. (Those you keep picking up the next book to find out what happens to the two next.) Our authors get you to fall for the two from the beginning. Ty is the experiences ex-military and Zane the methodical thinker – together they are the perfect FBI team. The book is so well written that you can actually see the characters in your head as you read. AND.. there is nothing hotter than two totally alpha males together (m/m) unless they would happen to let you join in (which, in this series, isn’t going to happen). The word realistic just keeps coming to mind. They hid their feeling from each other – hid their feeling from their family/ friends – and hid their feeling from their co-workers.

So how does it end? It doesn’t – you need to read through the first four because the fifth book comes out in May. At the end of the book for you think that they have worked through their personal issues but the authors leave you hanging. With the past these two have, well, you really can’t be sure what will happen next. I have to say that I am pissed at this point. I want them in love with the world saved and maybe them taking an actually relaxing vacation but then I guess the series would be over and I don’t want that either. I just want to keep reading about them because they are that great. So don’t wait... start with Cut & Run and don’t look back.

Cut & Run

A series of murders in New York City has stymied the police and FBI alike, and they suspect the culprit is a single killer sending an indecipherable message. But when the two federal agents assigned to the investigation are taken out, the FBI takes a more personal interest in the case.
Special Agent Ty Grady is pulled out of undercover work after his case blows up in his face. He's cocky, abrasive, and indisputably the best at what he does. But when he's paired with Special Agent Zane Garrett, it's hate at first sight. Garrett is the perfect image of an agent: serious, sober, and focused, which makes their partnership a classic cliché: total opposites, good cop-bad cop, the odd couple. They both know immediately that their partnership will pose more of an obstacle than the lack of evidence left by the murderer.
Practically before their special assignment starts, the murderer strikes again – this time at them. Now on the run, trying to track down a man who has focused on killing his pursuers, Grady and Garrett will have to figure out how to work together before they become two more notches in the murderer's knife.

Sticks & Stones

Six months after nearly losing their lives to a serial killer in New York City, FBI Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett are suffering through something almost as frightening: the monotony of desk duty. When they're ordered to take a vacation for the good of everyone's sanity, Ty bites the bullet and takes Zane home with him to West Virginia, hoping the peace and quiet of the mountains will give them the chance to explore the explosive attraction they’ve so far been unable to reconcile with their professional partnership.
Ty and Zane, along with Ty’s father and brother, head up into the Appalachian mountains for a nice, relaxing hike deep into the woods... where no one will hear them scream. They find themselves facing danger from all directions: unpredictable weather, the unrelenting mountains, wild animals, fellow hikers with nothing to lose, and the most terrifying challenge of all. Each other.

Fish & Chips

Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett are back on the job, settled into a personal and professional relationship built on fierce protectiveness and blistering passion. Now they’re assigned to impersonate two members of an international smuggling ring—an out-and-proud married couple—on a Christmas cruise in the Caribbean. As their boss says, surely they’d rather kiss each other than be shot at, and he has no idea how right he is.

Portraying the wealthy criminals requires a particular change in attitude from Ty and Zane while dealing with the frustrating waiting game that is their assignment. As it begins to affect how they treat each other in private, they realize there’s more to being partners than watching each other’s backs, and when the case takes an unexpected turn and threatens Ty’s life, he and Zane will have to navigate seas of white lies and stormy secrets, including some of their own

Divide and Conquer

Baltimore, Maryland, is a city in alarming distress. Rising violence is fanning the flames of public outrage, and all law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, are catching blame. Thus the FBI’s latest ideas to improve public relations: a municipal softball league and workshops for community leaders. But the new commitments just mean more time Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett have to spend apart when they’re happily exploring how to be more than by-the-book partners.

Then the latest spate of crime explodes in their faces—literally—throwing the city, the Bureau, and Ty and Zane’s volatile partnership both in and out of the office into chaos. They’re hip-deep in trouble, trying to track down bombers and bank robbers in the dark with very few clues, and the only way to reach the light at the end of the tunnel together requires Ty and Zane to close their eyes and trust each other to the fiery end.