Life is good for Nadia and Jack. Their wilderness lodge business is booming, and they’re building a new home together, complete with a couple of dogs. It’s as close to normal as life gets…especially for a pair of contract killers.
But for Jack, semi-retirement is a dangerous proposition. There are plenty of people who don’t want to lose his services. He’s halfway around the world when one of those disgruntled clients comes for Nadia. And he has no way to warn her.

The Nadia Stafford trilogy ‘Exit Strategy’, ‘Made To Be Broken’ and ‘Wild Justice’ is one of my favourite female assassin series. I liked that the trilogy had a strong story arc in which the characters of the assassins, Nadia and Jack, and their relationship with one another developed into something with some depth. It also helped that the plots were clever and twisty and that they took the time to get inside the heads of people who kill for money but still see themselves as having an ethical code.

I was surprised but pleased to see that Kelley Armstrong decided to revisit Nadia and Jack in two novellas, ‘Double Play‘ and ‘Perfect Victim‘. ‘Perfect Victim‘ is a crossover story with Kelley Armstrong’s Rockton series, taking place after the events of the second book, ‘A Darkness Absolute‘.

I spent today reading ‘Double Play‘. It’s only 130 pages long but it still packs a punch and it gave me an opportunity to see how Nadia and Jack are working through their new reality of being a couple.

I liked that the story was told in chapters that alternate between Nadia’s and Jack’s point of view. It worked well as a way of increasing the suspense while widening the view. Best of all, it finally allowed me to get inside Jack’s head – not an easy thing to do with a man who seldom speaks and almost never uses complete sentences.

As usual with these books, the body count is moderately high, the action scenes are vivid and the motivations are murky. The plot had enough twists to keep me guessing. I didn’t manage to figure out what was going on before the big reveal and even then, I wasn’t sure what the consequences would be.

I enjoyed being back in Nadia’s company and getting to know Jack a little more. The novella length was just enough to let me feel that I’d caught up with the characters and seen them react to a crisis, kill a few people and solve a puzzle, all of which was entertaining.