Call Me Anytime

Monroe (When I Should’ve Stayed) squanders a juicy premise in this strained romantic suspense novel. When swaggering Nashville homicide detective Dominic Dunn, the 35-year-old heir to a global coffee chain, calls the most frequently dialed number on a dead woman’s phone, he’s surprised to get phone sex operator Hannah May on the line. She’s a financially desperate 25 year old; it’s her first day on the job; and she’s a virgin. When Dominic realizes that the victims in his current case and a cold one both worked for Hannah’s new employer, he tracks her down and gets a wire tap on her work phone line, hoping to catch the killer. Hannah’s innocence and often cloying naivete (“Ew,” she thinks while imagining a customer “with his weiner out”) leads Dominic to offer to coach her through her calls. The pair grow closer, especially after Dominic demonstrates kindness to Hannah’s mother, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when Hannah was 12 and believes she’s living in an episode of NCIS. Once things heat up between them, Hannah’s discomfort with human sexuality falls suddenly away in sensual scenes that strain credulity. An abrupt third-act conflict about money feels underbaked and the mystery culminates in a haphazard showdown complete with an unsatisfying final reveal. Clunky exposition and wooden banter don’t help. This disappoints. (Nov.)