I have now read and enjoyed all three books in this series. This one has a fine mix of creepiness, suspense and end-of-the-book ambivalence. That last bit is very satisfying for readers like me who like to wonder what came after the end of the book. ( )

Third book in the Valerie Hart series sees the homicide detective is on the trail of what seems an easy open and shut case. A prominent DA, Adam Grant, has been murdered and his wife left with wounds that require surgery. There’s plenty of evidence at the scene pointing to a former felon who Grant prosecuted and who has now been released. The problem is that he’s disappeared completely. The investigation gets a little more complicated when it appears that victim and suspect have a woman in common and she doesn’t really fit in with either of their lives.

The opening of the book is quite sexually explicit but is nothing out of the ordinary for this author. While it probably could have been written around it’s not out of place for a book like this. There are two timelines to the story with one following the investigation from Valerie’s end and the other from an unnamed woman leading up to the event itself. Chapter headings give dates to help keep track. While this is a self-contained story and you don’t need to have read the previous books in the series I think they would help to understand Valerie’s character and relationships a lot more if you have done. ( )

I have to laugh at all the 1-star reviews because the beginning is rude, crude, and sexually explicit at times.

Well...yeah. Read the entire damn book, and you'll understand when you get the payoff at the end. Oh, and you're reading a book about a murderer, so all that death is good, but mention the words "cock" or "anal" or some such shit, and suddenly your heart's all aflutter with barely suppressed rage?

Whatever.

This is, as is usual for Saul Black, an incredibly well-plotted and well-paced novel that delivers its surprises and treats slowly, just as it should. Valerie Hart is a fantastic character, flawed, and completely self-aware of her flaws, but often willing to cede to them anyway.

Black always provides strong antagonists for Valerie, and I'm going out on a limb here and stating that Sophia is likely the best of the three books.

At the same time, Black is a master at setting up the subplot that mirrors the main plot. If the first book was about hope, and the second was about trust, this book is about loyalty. And Black is brilliant in holding up those objects of loyalty and twisting them this way and that, letting the reader see both the clean, shiny side, but also the ugly, twisted, dirty side of them.

This is a seriously good author and a seriously good series. ( )

Homicide detective Valerie Hart is back with another tale filled with dead bodies, twists and an ending I did not expect. This was a great summer read. I am looking forward to the next one. ( )

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.

Not much to say here, I could not get into this book. Other reviewers mentioned how crude it is, and honestly it is. I just couldn't root for the main character, Valerie Hart. I don't know if I would have felt differently if I had read book #1 (The Killing Lessons) and book #2 (LoveMurder). Valerie is obsessed with sex it seems and her ties to this case (a man she almost had sex with is killed during a home invasion) didn't do much for me. I am definitely going to pass on reading any moer about Valerie.

"Anything For You" follows homicide detective Valerie Hart. Valerie is called in when former prosecutor Adam Grant is found murdered and his wife injured. It looks like a home invasion gone wrong, but as readers follow along, something else seems to be going on. Valerie is worried about working the case and anyone finding out that she and Adam Grant had a passing something (honestly the scenes about them almost having sex were just...blah) and wants to stay on the case.

I can't say much about Valerie besides she seems or is written as oversexed. She has recently got back together with her ex-husband Nick and they just seem to be two bodies that meet and never really click. Or at least I didn't think they did. I don't want to poo poo women liking and enjoying sex. Valerie is just written as a male fantasy I think. She meets a dude and starts thinking about how he is in bed and practically starts humping men's legs. She really is a female version of the Lucas Davenport character in the first couple of Prey books. I stopped reading that series for a year since the first few books were so bad and I was tired of reading about how Lucas saw a woman and how he jumped right into wanting "to nail her."

I can't say much else about the secondary characters since I didn't get a good sense of anyone. Once again I am going to blame myself for getting a ARC and not realizing until after the fact it was the third book in a series. We do flip between Valerie and a woman in this one (no spoilers) but once again I didn't think the other woman was written well at all.

The writing was not good. I think other reviewers nailed it on the head is that you definitely get that a man wrote this book especially with how Black graphically describes sex. I started to skip over any sex related scenes. The flow wasn't working for me either since you go back and forth between Valerie investigating and then some mysterious woman who is up to something. It takes way too long for the dots to connect.

The setting of the book is mostly San Francisco, but it just felt like any old beige city in America. I wish that Black had incorporated more of the city into this. I just recently watched "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" and thought that movie was brilliant in showcasing the many facets of those that live in that city.

The ending was okay. I was just glad to be done. ( )