ONE LAST BREATH is the debut novel of Laura Griffin. It's a fast-paced romantic suspense with a lot of surprises.

Feenie Malone is struggling to launch her career as a reporter and survive the divorce from her upper echelon, cheating ex-husband. She gets a break when she's assigned to the police beat and stumbles into a murder case with ties back to her ex-husband. In walks Marco Juarez, a former cop-turned-private investigator, who already has a strong interest in the dealings of the murdered Rico Martinez and Feenie's ex-husband, John Garland. He offers to help Feenie but unbeknownst to her, Marco has his own agenda. A very personal one.

This is how a debut romantic suspense novel should be done. Ms. Griffin supplies memorable, believable, far- from-perfect characters in a story with plenty of twists. She draws out the development of the relationship between Feenie and Marco until the reader is itching for these two to get together. And she weaves the subplots into the story in such a way that they add to, and ultimately become part of, the larger plot.

The only thing I took issue with was the title. I still can't figure out how it fits with the story. But it's intriguing so why not?

Ms. Griffin has a winner. I'm adding her to my list of authors to watch out for.