Act of Betrayal Book

3.5 Stars

A gadfly to some in the Cuban Exile Community, Miami reporter Alex Aguirre is killed by a car bomb. Police reporter, Britt Montero is the first one to scene. As she files her report a blonde man walks in carrying a folder and Britt thinks oh oh here comes a crazy fanatic. But MacDonald brings her a story that she can't walk away from: his 13 year old son, Charles, has been missing for four years and the police may never have investigated. Too old and not a pretty young girl for national exposure her friend, Lottie muses.

As Britt follows up on the bombing, she quickly discovers other boys missing; all about the same age and looks. Driven, she keeps on searching while forced to write a profile on a prominent Cuban Exile leader, Juan Carlos Reyes. Oddly, she thinks nothing of the fact that this is the third time she has written about him in almost as many days all the while a tropical wave is heading towards South Florida. Charles MacDonald had disappeared on his way to Reyes' home to clean his boat when the teen disappeared and Aguirre was a thorn in his side.

Reyes and Jorge Bravo (another major player in the Exile community) both claim to have known her late father and have something that belonged to the young freedom fighter. Desperate to find answers about her father and her missing boys, Britt searches almost frantically for those answers. She has taken the bait.

While the bomber's identity is implied, the crime wasn't really solved nor the explanation behind the missing boys' abductor's perversity never quite explained satisfactorily. Nor was her mother's animosity toward her young husband satisfying. Montero's fling with an ax killer was believable. One minute, she is pining away for her on and off again then sleeps with a guy who may have justifiably killed an intruder? Even in Miami, that is somewhat over the top. The hurricane (unnamed) that becomes a major character in the novel is a thin reference to Hurricane Andrew may have been a dramatic denouement to one plot line bugged me because Andrew happened years before the Act of Betrayal storylines happened, a minor flaw but that culminated me to give ACT OF BETRAYAL 3 ½ stars rather than 4 stars.