Federal Prosecutor Melanie Vargas has her hands full when two privileged white teenagers, one of them the stepdaughter of a politician running for the Senate, overdose on heroin in one of their homes. The girls were students at an elite prep school, Holbrooke, and ran with the popular crowd in school. Melanie's boss, PR-savvy and eager to please Bernadette DeFelice, wants to make sure that the case is handled swiftly and quietly, so that their office looks like rock stars for their timely pursuit of justice and perhaps the senatorial candidate will remember Bern when he gets into office. It's supposed to be an open-and-shut OD case, and Melanie is supposed to find the drug dealer who sold to the kids and prosecute him. But things aren't what they seem.

For one thing, Carmen Reyes, the daughter of the janitor in the building where the dead girls were found has been missing since the same night of their deaths. Carmen was a scholarship student at Holbrooke, and had no close relationship to the deceased except that they lived in the same building. Somehow, though, the same heroin that the other girls overdosed on is found in Carmen's locker. Even more confusing is the fact that one of the girls was left-handed, but the drugs were found on the right side of her body, and the drugs being left in plain sight is just a little too easy to Melanie. She's determined to get to the bottom of what happened, and to bring Carmen Reyes back home safely.

THE FINISHING SCHOOL was a thrilling, fast-paced romantic suspense novel that kept me on the edge of my seat. I can usually guess the endings of these sorts of books pretty quickly, but I didn't catch on until the last 30 pages. Michele Martinez has a knack for writing snappy dialogue, intriguing plots, and keeping the story moving so that you never get bored. This is the first of her books that I've read, but is the second in the Melanie Vargas series (the first is Most Wanted). These books can definitely be read out of order, and I'd recommend them to anyone in the mood for solid and entertaining romantic suspense.

Book Summary

In a glittering penthouse high above Park Avenue, two beautiful teenagers, students at an exclusive Manhattan girls' school, lie dead under suspicious circumstances. Feeling pressure from the top to solve the high-profile case fast, federal prosecutor Melanie Vargas breaks all the rules and goes undercover. Teamed with Dan O'Reilly, a hard- to-resist FBI agent with a talent for making her pulse race, Melanie embarks on a wild chase from the rarefied world of New York's elite private schools to the darkest recesses of the city's nightlife. And, ultimately, into a fight for her life against a devious killer who has no intention of getting caught.