This is one of those books for the person who is hopelessly addicted to characters in books with unique names. The main characters are Shanghai Knight and Mia Kemble, two star crossed lovers who meet and part many times throughout their lives and this book.

Shanghai is the son of an alcohol rehab needing father and a mother who ran off while he was just a child. Mia is the daughter of the powerful Caesar Kemble who owns all but the Knight’s humble ranch in Spur County, which is located on the Texas Mexico border.

She falls in love with Shanghai when just a child and as any proper young man should do, he spurns her advances until such time as she is old enough to know what she’s doing. He’s become a rodeo bull rider and she chases him down in Nevada where they have a night of wild sex that ends in them both angry with the other — one out of guilt for taking advantage of a girl he’s been more like a big brother to all his life and the other because he won’t profess undying love to her. They part, but the deed is done and she’s got the fruit of their love to show for it. She calls him to tell him, but bumbles the tale and he accuses her of lying. Too hurt to prove the fact to him, she seeks out Shanghai’s brother, Cole and marries him so that her child will have the Knight name.

Unlike his brother, Cole has become a respectable businessman and he begins to take over the Golden Spurs ranch.

On a business trip, his plane crashes close to the Mexican border and both Cole and Mia are thought to be dead at first. Cole is found unconscious and returns to the ranch for treatment, but Mia is lost and presumed dead.

Actually a drug lord named Octavio Morales has found her and taken her to his lair. There he tries to woo her as he has a fantasy that she will become his wife and he can become a respectable businessman instead of the son of an unmarried woman and a Mexican chemicals manufacturer that he really is. For over a year he keeps her like this, never touching her in anything but the most respectful of ways.

But Mia longs to be free and reunited with her small daughter, Vanilla and her mother. A young man approaches her and arranges for her to hide in a plane that is scheduled to deliver marijuana bales to the US, but this man is also an informant, so this delivery is also slated to be raided by the DEA. However, someone tips Tavio off and he removes Mia from the plane. His brother goes on to deliver the marijuana and is caught by the agents. Mia is thrown into the dungeon where Morales tortures people who have crossed him and she fears the worst, however he is so enamored of her that she still finds her way back to her prison in his house.

Meanwhile, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist has been given a tip that Mia is being held hostage at the drug lord’s lair and tries to arrange an escape for her. Instead he is caught and brought to the dungeon. Mia helps him to escape after he’s been tortured and they are picked up by Mexican police who jail her on drug trafficing charges. Her mother aided by the journalist arrange with the police who are corrupt and in the pay of the drug lord to see Mia. It’s then that they hatch their jail break plan which pulls in Shanghai to help save Mia from the Mexicans.

He makes a daring helicopter landing in the jail’s courtyard and then, the chopper leaves unexpectedly and they must escape another way. Shanghai knows of a tunnel that’s being used for another jail break and follows it out of the compound. Together, he and Mia travel the miles to the river and make a river crossing at night. They find an abandoned cabin where they can eat and rest before making the rest of the journey to civilization. Of course, they also have sex.

There are a couple more scenes before the drug lord is killed, the corrupt DEA agent is revealed and the corrupt Mexican policeman is killed and the two lovers at last begin a life together as man and wife.

I felt like I needed a drug treatment center by the time I got through reading this book — it was so convoluted and the characters and their relationships with each other were so intertwined and often bizarre.

Shanghai is not his father’s son and Mia is not her father’s daughter. I don’t think Shanghai’s real father is ever revealed, but Mia’s is told who her real father is by her mother after she’s returned to the family from being held captive in Mexico. The man Mia thinks of as her father had an affair with another woman and there is a set of twin sisters out there somewhere. The newspaper reporter has two adopted twins one of whom is dead and the other is Shanghai’s other girl. Mia’s mother falls in love with the newspaperman. Shanghai’s brother has Mia declared dead and marries another woman, so all that has to be straightened out.

See? Very complicated and difficult to keep straight and truly not necessary for an already complicated plot. We can only suppose they are set ups for later books by this author who already has The Girl with the Golden Spurs to prequel this one.

Oh, and the golden gun was never wielded by a girl……

The Girl with the Golden Gun by Ann Major
Published by MIRA Books 2005
ISBN 0-7783-2224-6

Tags: Ann Major, Golden Series, romance

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