Seconds to Live

Scarlet Falls

By: Melinda Leigh

Narrated by: Cris Dukehart

A Wall Street Journal bestseller

Wildlife biologist Mac Barrett avoided his hometown of Scarlet Falls for years - too many bad memories. But when he receives the news that his father is dying, he rushes home only to discover he’s too late. Shaken, Mac retreats to his remote cabin seeking peace and solace. Instead, he crashes his jeep to narrowly avoid running over the naked body of a woman lying in the road. Even more disturbing, when he regains consciousness, the body is gone.

Police detective Stella Dane wants to believe Mac, even if his story about the vanishing body seems far-fetched. But when Mac’s description matches the missing woman she’s been searching for, it raises a disturbing question: How does a dead body disappear?

Mac and Stella will have to work together to find the answer and catch a psychotic kidnapper - and quickly. The killer has a deadly message to send, and the case is about to become personal....

2016 Golden Leaf Award Winner

©2016 Melinda Leigh (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Love Ms Leigh's work

I cannot help it. I have bummed on the Scarlett Falls series as well as the Morgan Dane. They are ready listens and great reads.

Good Listen

It was a very interesting book from the first page. Kept me hopping until the end. Great book.

fantastic as always! really enjoy the narrative

love love love her books... the entire series is wonderful! on to the Midnight Series.

Amazing listen

Couldn’t stop listening. This book kept me company on a lot of errands.
Narration was really good.
Just realised I listened to book two and three but didn’t listen to the 1st book. Definitely going to be listening to that soon.

my favorite series by far!!

This series is amazing. I listened to 3 books in a week. So good. The narrator keeps it interesting with her talents to become multiple characters.

Engaging listen

I really enjoyed this story. It pulled me in right from the beginning and I loved watching these two dig into what was going on. This book can definitely be read as a standalone but if you have read the previous books in the series we have met both Mac (both 1 & 2) and Stella (2) and I loved getting to see a different side to Mac. This story had me fully engaged as they tried to figure out who was abducting the women and then killing them. They had quite a few pieces they had to put together and I was on the edge of my seat. I really enjoyed this one.
The narrator did a good job.

Should have started with this one.

I have a fan of Melinda Leigh, I’m almost ashamed to say that I’ve been going through her books in the wrong sequence. This was a foundation book for the other series that follow.

As a burgeoning writer myself, I took a lot of notes from this book. It is the complete package. Mystery, romance, excitement, and crime. This was a phenomenal read.

Holds your interest

I like the well developed characters and relationships. The story line held my interest throughout “Seconds to Live.”

Great book but terrible narration..

I absolutely love Ms. Leigh’s murder mysteries and I hate when they end. I can never figure out who the bad guy is until the hero or heroine does, very near the end of the book. I like not being able to figure out who-dunnit early in the book.

Another thing I really, really like is the romance is without angst or misunderstandings. That’s awesome. I hate when a 300 to 400 page book is just full of that crap and nothing to go with it. This one was great in not having that kind of nonsense.

While Mac and Stella fell in love there was all kinds of mystery and murder going on. And they were a great twosome; Stella being a cop and Mac being trained by his insane father in the art of warfare. Geez, what he and his brothers and sister went through as children was totally crazy: their father throwing his paralyzed self into the pool and making Mac save him from drowning, AND Mac was 11 years old. Who does that? Ms. Leigh gave you more than the murderer to hate.

It was very nice that Grant, Ellie, Brody and Hannah were in this book. It’s always nice seeing old friends. I liked Lance, too, but he was kind of messed up. He did have enough smarts to quit the force when he realized it. And, Captain Horner was just an ass. All he cared about was how he looked on TV during a press conference. I didn’t like him at all.

There wasn’t really any sexual tension in this book but there was some nicely written sex. There was swearing and the F-bomb was released 24 times.

As to the narrator: Nothing personal but Ms. Dukehart sucks. She sucked on the and second book but I thought she’s do better on this one. I mean, I can see a narrator being lousy years ago, when all that was required was for someone to read a book. BUT with all the complaints about a female reader not trying to make their voice manly or reading like a robot, whatever, you’d think someone would get better. No so, for Ms. Dukehart. She still thinks that all she has to do is read the book. So, I’m done with Melinda Leigh’s books unless or until she finds a better narrator. If this is the best she can do when it comes to a narrator then I’ll find someone else to listen to. If the book says he spoke in a deep sexy voice and he actually sounds like a girl, then something is definitely wrong, and the hero, Mac, sounded just like a girl through the whole book. The best Ms. Dukehart did was make two old women sound like two old women. I guess she thought that was good enough.

Scary Bad Guy, Brave Good Guys, & 1 Tough ladycop

Excellent characters and great location. The bad guy is really bad, although Leigh is good at slight of hand hiding the killer. As always, the hero and love interest is steaming, his love of detective heroine lady cop steamy, and all things are timed to a "T."