Readers who are able to firmly willingly suspend their disbelief are in for a rocket of a read in Karen Robards' THE MOSCOW DECEPTION. This is the second book in The Guardian series. I didn't remember much of the first book (published fully one year ago), The Ultimatum, so I believe this could function as a standalone title.

Bianca St. Ives is known as The Guardian. She ran a multi-national protection firm with her father where they swindled con men out of their ill-gotten gains. But her father seems to have died during a $200 million heist from the government, and now Bianca is just trying to stay anonymous and out of the government's hands. Turns out she's the last of a batch of genetically engineered super soldiers, and the government wants her dead in order to sweep the whole project under the rug. And that man she thought was her dad? Turns out he was dispatched by the government to kill her as a child. Instead, he hid her and raised her to have incredible fighting and spycraft skills.

We're told Bianca has these mad spy skills, but then we watch her make situational mistake after mistake, which raises the stakes for the dangerous situations that she's in. Fortunately, she's stocked with all kinds of over-the-top gadgets, as if she's got Bond's Q in her back pocket: garter belts that contain rappelling equipment that can get her down nineteen-story buildings and bullet-proof evening gowns. In addition, there's an MI6 agent, now an independent contractor, who's got the hots for her and manages to rescue her a few times.

There's a lot of crazy action, and a little romance is thrown in as well. The pace is rollicking, and the danger level remains high throughout Bianca's escapades. If you like your books with high tension and lots of creative adventure, Robards' THE MOSCOW DECEPTION fits the bill.