Fair Game by Patricia Briggs

Title: Fair Game (Alpha and Omega #3)
Author: Patricia Briggs
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy
Publisher:  Orbit (6th March 2012)
Blurb:

Death stalks the night.

They say opposites attract, and for werewolves Anna and Charles, this is certainly true. Charles, the pack enforcer, is a dominant alpha – whereas Anna has the power to calm others of her kind. Now that werewolves have dared to reveal themselves to humans, it’s their job to keep the pack in line.

The pressure mounts when the FBI requires Charles’s assistance. He’s sent on a mission to Boston with Anna, and they quickly realise that a serial killer is targeting werewolves. And that they’re next on the killer’s list.

Rating:***** (5 stars)

Review:

Fair Game is the third book in Patricia Briggs’s Alpha and Omega series, which is a spin-off from her Mercy Thompson series. This means that there is some crossing over of characters, but the two series don’t converge – they are very definitely separate stories.

I have been waiting for this book since I finished Hunting Ground. I cannot say that I am in any way disappointed. This book more than lived up to my expectations. Once I started reading I just could not put it down, and finished the book within hours of starting. I had to know what happened next.

One of the major plus signs, at least as far as I am concerned, with the Alpha and Omega series is that Charles and Anna are an established couple when we meet them – we don’t get to watch them dance around each other, or see the moment when they first fell lin love. What we do get to see is them working out how to be a couple; how to be husband and wife. I really like that about this series, and Fair Game just adds to this dynamic.

Fair Game is set some time after the events of River Marked, when werewolves are well and truly out of the closet. I really liked that this book clearly illustrated the cost of this, it’s kind of glossed over in the Mercy Thompson series. Anna is a brilliant character in this – she knows her own mind, and doesn’t back down.

The plot of the book is pretty simple – hunt down the serial killer – but there are plenty of twists on the way. I didn’t see any of them coming, and I really enjoyed that. Thinking back there were some hints, but I just didn’t pick up on them until the reveal – which I think is a sign of brilliant writing.

If you like werewolves then this, and its companion, series is definitely one to give a go. The wolves have teeth in this, and have, I think, quite realistic wolf-ish behaviour. There is a definite sense that Briggs knows her wolves, and it shows. They and their pack dynamic feel real. I am really looking to the next book in both the Alpha and Omega series and the Mercy Thompson series.