The Arranger by L.J. Sellers

This story is set in the future, year 2023.

Lara Evans is a cop at heart. She was a homicide detective for sixteen years. After leaving the police force she was unemployed for years. Unemployment is high, jobs are a valuable commodity and the jobs that offer med-cards are much sought after. Gun laws have got loose and health insurance got scarce. There is also a growing shortage of doctors. So paramedics are now in demand. So Lara has become a freelance paramedic. Lara liked her job. She loved the moment of rushing to a scene not knowing what chaos she would encounter. She always takes her stun gun everywhere that she goes.

When she is out responding to an emergency call, she arrives at the scene and she has to avoid been shot by a man who comes out of the house and starts shooting at her. Inside she finds a man has been shot but he is still alive. The man is Thaddeus Morton who is the employment commissioner. Some one had tried to kill the employment commissioner but who would do that and why? Morton asks that Lara does not report the incident blaming it on a lover and tells her it would look bad for him and he would be removed from overseeing The Gauntlet.

Lara has trained intensely for the last four years to be a contender in this years Gauntlet, she is one of the contestants. The Gauntlet is the one thing in the country that still gives people something to cheer for, it is like the Olympics, millions of viewers watch the show.

The contest had become the reason she gets up on a morning. If she keeps Morton’s secrets and he stays on as a judge Lara thinks this would be for the best because it couldn’t hurt to have someone in her corner while she competed, especially with the Gauntlet said to be more difficult this year and more physically punishing at forty-two Lara was to be the oldest contestant. The analysts have put her chances of winning at fifty to one.

Can Lara conquer all the challengers the contest throws at her? Or will life itself throw its own challenges she must overcome?

Meanwhile Paul Madsen would do anything to impress Camille the girl he works with in his government job. He thinks that by losing weight and paying for plastic surgery on his face he will improve is chances of getting with Camille and helping her out with her career. So he comes up with the plan for staff to be hired and fired for cash knowing that in the current job climate people will be prepared to pay lots of money for the job positions which have high-end med-cards and that the savings of not paying health insurance would make it an offer that those seeking these positions could not refuse. Can Paul pull it off and win the affections of Camille?

This book had me gripped all the way through. It keeps you in suspense with every page right through to the end of the book. So much happens throughout the story but it is so well written that you do not loose the thread of what is going on. I really like a book that you can not guess the ending and this is one of those books. It builds you up to a superb ending.

If you like murder and suspense this is the book for you.

For more information on books by L.J. Sellers visit their website http://ljsellers.com/