Gut wrenching look at the effects of a childhood riffled with verbal abuse and tragedy and how that affected the hero Zane Wolfe.

Not many authors delve so deeply into the man side of the effects on childhood abuse. Usually those types of men are the psycho killers in a suspense novel. In Big Bad Wolfe the hero, FBI Special Agent Zane Wolfe takes on the toughest missions and nothing scares him until he finds out he is the father of a 5 year old boy. Then all of his childhood traumas come to the forefront that he’s never dealt with.

Assistant director of a school for disadvantaged children Jillian Ramsay has temporary guardianship of her best friend’s son after she mysterious dies. When his maternal uncle and his wife decide they want to fight Jillian for custody she decides to call in his unknowing father to come help her get custody to prevent his cruel uncle from getting custody.

Even though Zane is plenty alpha when it comes to his job he is brought to his knees with the knowledge he has a son. He wants nothing to do with his son for fear of that the sins of his father are inside of him and it would be in his son’s best interest if he didn’t take on the role of Daddy. But when strange hang ups and vandalism befall Jillian and he meets the Uncle he decides he will stay long enough to make sure everything works out.

Zane brings in his old friend Dallas and his wife Mia (from Laws of Attraction – which was great to see how they were doing) to help. But the driving force of this book was the healing of Zane Wolfe. There were so many great scenes between Jillian and Zane. Jillian was a very tough intuitive woman who is the backbone of this book. It wasn’t all sorrow though there was plenty of suspense, sexy moments and also a dash of the author’s signature humor.

I always enjoy a Diana Duncan novel and this one was no exception.
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