Cassandra Reads

Once again, Gin finds herself in a mess that only she can really clean up.  This one starts out as her sister Bria's mess but the bad guy, Beauregard Benson, is quickly going to make himself Gin's problem. There are several fights between Gin and hit men of the underworld, but since everyone is trying to kill the Spider that isn't a surprise.  

Gin gets caught up in Benson and his drug trade because of one of her waitresses,  Catalina Vasquez, use to live in Southtown and her ex is trying to get her to give out Burn pills at the Pork Pit, the BBQ restaurant Gin owns. Gin sees a confrontation between Catalina and her ex, Tony, at the Ashland Community College were Gin takes classes. Gin being Gin, she can't just leave Catalina in a possibly dangerous situation like that and goes over to take care of the bad guys (Tony and two vampire goons).  

The next day, Tony follows Catalina from work to her home.  Gin follows, knowing that he isn't following Catalina to apologize for scaring her the day before.  Gin and Catalina end up watching Tony's murder at the hands of Benson, who is a vampire who can feed off emotions. Gin calls Bria, who's a cop and things go on from there.  Bria has a grudge against Benson for killing one of her informants, who was only 18 years old.  Bria goes a little off the deep end, obsessed with bringing Benson in even though she knows that's not really how it works in Ashland - he's too rich and has too many cops in this pocket to stay in jail for long.  Now, though, she has a witness to him murdering a man - Catalina, since Gin knows better.  

There are plans to kill the witness, while one of Benson's men plots with Gin to kill Benson.  He'd seen Gin and Catalina when they'd witnessed Tony's murder but hadn't said anything, which is explained by him being Catalina's uncle.  This is also the reason that he wants Benson dead.

Things get out of hand when Bria tries to take Catalina to the police station to get her statement, Benson's been tipped off and Gin has to go save them.  She gets them to safety, but gets captured in the process.  Benson uses Burn on her (a drug with elemental properties, hence the name), which nearly kills her. This gives her even more reasons to kill Benson so when Silvio, Catalina's uncle, gets her out (with him getting captured this time), she plans on killing Benson - by walking to his door and killing him when he answers.  The plan turns out to be more detailed than that, but that's really want ends up happening.  It ends up being less dramatic then I really expected, although having a lot of Southtown follow her to Benson's house and then mock Benson was too funny - he's not as beloved as he thought he was!

Somehow, killing Benson leads Gin to get Silvio as an assistant.  I'll admit that at this point I had to stop and laugh for a minute.  I'm not really sure what was so funny, but the idea of Gin getting an assistant is just too funny. 

Silvio being at the Pork Pit turns out to be a good thing when M.M. Monroe comes in.  I think there's a new Big Bad in town.  

In some ways, this series has gotten kind of predictable - Bad Guy threatens someone Gin loves and Gin kills BG by end of book.  There's really more to each book then that but that's want it really boils down to.  I'm glad we have a new Big Bad in Ashland.  I'm a little worried about it being a Monroe, but that's okay.

I'm really glad that Gin and Owen fixed their drama. I  understood both views, but Owen should have expected it.  One of the things I love about this series is their relationship and the tension was driving me crazy!