Even When You Lie

January 16, 2023
Early in Cruz’s uneven debut, a romantic thriller, a young woman dies after leaving an envelope for defense attorney Cade McCarrick at Holcombe & Donaldson, a prestigious Dallas law firm. Though warned to leave the matter alone, Reagan Reyes, the firm’s private investigator and a former intelligence officer, discovers the envelope’s contents relate to a recent murder outside a nightclub. Despite the risk of exposing her romantic relationship with Cade—expressly forbidden by the firm’s rules—Reagan investigates further, assisted by Rafi, a former Army Ranger who’s now homeless. When Reagan uncovers a connection between the Holcombes, the firm’s wealthy and well-connected owners, and the woman’s death and the earlier murder, Reagan and Cade become targets of a killer who has woven a web of deceit to disguise the murders’ true motives. Blood ties and money are at the heart of the matter, and the tension rises along with the body count. Though all the components of a romantic thriller are in place—an adventurous young woman, a dashing love interest, a fast car, and a city riddled with corruption—they generate neither passion nor action. Intriguingly flawed secondary characters suggest Cruz can do better next time. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary.

February 1, 2023
A pair of murders bring the unsavory secrets of an Uptown Dallas law firm to light. Despite her sterling credentials--she's a former captain in the U.S. Air Force and congressional aide--Reagan Reyes is on thin ice in her job with Holcombe & Donaldson. She's not just junior partner Cade McCarrick's investigator, but his lover, and company policy proscribes any such liaisons and prescribes strict sanctions for rule-breakers. Her situation becomes even more fraught when an untidy pink-haired woman storms into the posh office, demands to see Cade, and greets the news that she can't by thrusting an envelope into Reagan's hands and storming out. Impulsively following the woman into the street, Reagan is just in time to see her collapse on a bench, to be spirited off to the hospital, where she'll be pronounced dead. The envelope's contents--a birth certificate for one Cesar Morales, an alcoholic beverage permit for Club Saturnalia, and a faded photograph of two teenagers--seem innocuous enough, but together they spell danger for everyone at the firm, from blue-blooded managing partner Bridger Holcombe down to Reagan, the newest arrival and the most vulnerable. Alternating among Reagan's attempts to work out the source of the threats, her unlikely alliances with people like homeless Army Ranger Rafi Velasquez and Lupita Morales, Cesar's grandmother, and her bouts of forbidden sex with Cade, Cruz slowly peels back the layers of malfeasance that have kept Holcombe & Donaldson aloft for so many years until a deliriously extended climax shows the last of the firm's skeletons leaping from the closet. A powerful indictment of systemic racism at its most insidious.

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