"DEEP COVER," by Traci Hunter Abramson, Covenant Communications, $16.99, 262 pages (f)
Kelsey Weber has been planted by the CIA as a nanny for a terrorist in the Middle East. The mission overseas goes haywire, and in the mayhem she takes a bullet from her employer. When she's pulled back stateside to recover, she struggles adjusting back to a Mayberry lifestyle in her parents' empty home in Virginia.
Enter Noah Cabbott, an FBI agent who moved into a house a couple doors down from the Webers after Kelsey's stint had begun. Both the Weber family and Noah are unaware of Kelsey's deep cover, and her attempts at shielding them from worrying about her have started to take their toll on everyone involved.
When sparks fly between Kelsey and Noah, who are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the whole need-to-know gig rears its ugly head when the two are unknowingly paired on an inter-bureau task force. Noah feels a bit slighted at having been told just enough truth to keep Kelsey's story legit, and she feels the weight of keeping secrets from those who are closest to her.
The task force discovers a mole in the agency that is feeding info to terrorists, and both Kelsey and Noah are forced to work through their personal differences while trying to thwart the mole's attempts to bring the war on terrorism back to U.S. soil.
The book's target audience is definitely skewed toward a female demographic. As a self-disclosed adrenaline movie junkie, there were parts of the book that seemed a little long, but the author's familiarity with the intelligence community keeps it intriguing, and there were enough Jason Bourne-type sequences to keep it interesting.
The story weaves a little Mormon terminology throughout, but not so much to become a dominant theme. Traci Hunter Abramson, a former CIA employee and a Mormon, does a good job allowing religious themes to speak and not shout.
Overall, "Deep Cover" is a good read that addresses issues worth pondering in your own relationships.
"Deep Cover" is pretty family-friendly would interest mid-teens and older. There are no references to the budding romance going beyond a smooch, and the minimal violence in the storyline is described in general terms — nothing gory.
Tim Johnson is the art director at KSL-TV in Salt Lake City. He and his wife, Alicia, are the proud parents of five daughters who, thankfully, look like their mother.