This HaBO comes from Chantelle, who wants to find this series:
I read a book a while back. I can’t remember character names I’m afraid, just a vague idea of plot…
Right at the start of the book the male main character was tied by his ankles, hanging upside down. Vaguely remember having a younger guy with him and deciding to escape when the younger man couldn’t hold out much longer?
He works for private security company or something like that. There’s a whole group of guys working with him. They’re all a bunch of misfits I think, about to lose a government contract?
He has a thing for the girl working the front desk. I think she has a checkered past and someone is coming after her? This is the main story.
I think that a female psychiatrist is sent in to work with them, to get them working together and functioning better as a team? It turns out she had a thing in the past with the boss? (Though that relationship is covered in a different book).
That’s all I can remember, sorry.
There was a period in time where lots of series involved security forces and mercenaries, but hopefully we can track this one down.
Matt Wallace: Seven Deadly sins novellas?
Oh, I think I know this. It is the Deep Ops series by Rebecca Zanetti.https://www.fantasticfiction.com/z/rebecca-zanetti/deep-ops/
Was it kinky? If it was an older book, there are a lot of pieces here that remind me of The Knights of the Boardroom series by Joey Hill
Sounds like it might be a Suzanne Brockmann.
Could it be a book in Lexi Blake’s Masters and Mercenaries series, or an earlier series related to that one? I’ve only read Book 1 of Masters and Mercenaries, but it felt like a spin-off of an older series, and I distinctly remember one of the security guys having a thing for the receptionist, as well as there being a female psychologist working with the team.
Sounds like a Fiona Quinn to me, I haven’t read one that starts like this, but the cast of characters and situations sounds like it. there are two or three series with overlapping characters.
I agree with @Liza S that this could be Lexi Blake’s Masters & Mercenaries series, where the massive amount of fire power is equaled only by the non-stop BDSM-related boinking. I read the first ten or so books in the series almost as guilty pleasures, gobbling them down one-after-the-other like a jarful of peanuts. (Both the receptionist and the psychologist feature as heroines in their own books.) Blake later expanded the series and there are now SO MANY books, I kinda lost track, but those first few books are romantic-suspense escapism at its best. Highly recommended—even if not the series @Chantelle is looking for.
Who’d have guessed that so many possibilities existed?!
@Kareni: there is no premise so unusual, esoteric, or bizarre that the Bitchery can’t come up with at least a few examples!
It is not Fiona Quinn. I have read all of her books, some more than once. Nothing in them like this.
I second Zanetti’s Deep Ops series. The gang is misfit operatives and the psychologist who falls in love with the boss definitely line up.
I don’t think this is Brockmann. I have a memory like a sponge – not the absorptive part, the full of holes part – but I have read and reread her obsessively enough that I would be surprised if this was one of hers.
This sounds similar to “Dark of Night” by Suzanne Brockmann. I don’t remember if the beginning with the guy hanging by his ankles matches (it’s been years since I read it), but the heroine is the receptionist at the hero’s security company and there is a female psychiatrist or therapist who works with them.
Agree with Lisa and DiscoDolly – sounds like Lexi Blake’s Masters and Mercenaries #1 The Dom Who Loved Me. Say Hi to Big Tag for me.
I just cracked open The Dom Who Loved Me, @H@LT, and it does not start with a guy hanging by his ankles. However, I think that scene is alluded to later in the story (or at least it sounds very familiar), which makes me think the OP is asking for a book in an earlier series that this one spun off of. I just thought of an author friend I can ask, so I’ll report back (or send her here) if she knows.
@Lisa S. I think you might be right. There is a later book in the series which starts with the brother of the hero from The Dom Who Loved Me being interrogated and I think he is being hung by his ankles.
Ugh I can’t remember the name or author but I swear there’s a series that consists of ex-military members who do special ops and suchlike. After the military they started their own security agency. There is one book where the heroine is named Honor and they have to rescue her from being kidnapped in Iraq or Afghanistan. That’s not the book, but I’m wondering if there is another in the series that matches.
If it isn’t the book by Lexi Blake (who I haven’t read but must now check out!) could it be by Pamela Clare (Cobra Elite Series), or Sawyer Bennett (Jameson Force Security)? The description of a character having a thing for the woman on the front desk is ringing a bell for me. I went through what book notes I do have, and these are two series I’ve read that might fit the description.