It has been a long while since I read a romance suspense novel; I picked Linda Howard's Veil of Night because I enjoyed reading Linda's previous novels, plus the heroine in this story is a wedding planner and I was interested to know more about the profession through the story.

Jaclyn Wilde loves her job and she put in all her time and efforts in running her own events business, Premier. Together with her mother, they had built up Premier's name through their detailed and well organised planning and although their work is not entirely a bed of roses, Jaclyn and Madelyn always see through everything no matter how difficult the clients and/or the tasks at hand.

However, Carrie Edwards, her latest client has ways of irritating her and making things difficult not only to her and to the other vendors as well. She would decide to change the colour of the bridesmaids' wedding dresses at the last minute, or criticise that the food is not up to her taste and status, blah blah blah. As much as she is annoying and demanding, many people figured it wouldn't do them any good should they want to make a huge fuss over her unreasonable tantrums, considering that she is marrying the son of a senator.

Just as Jaclyn is trying to get over another one of Carrie's unreasonable demands and the slap she had given her, she is shocked to learn that Carrie was murdered after they had arranged to meet up to discuss more of the wedding details, together with the other vendors as well. Now everyone that is present during that meeting became a suspect and it doesn't put Jaclyn in a favourable spot as she had forgotten and left her briefcase where the crime scene is.

Detective Eric Wilder is assigned to the case, but he is in an awkward situation since he had had one passionate night with Jaclyn and although he is professional enough to not let his personal life mingle with his job, it bugs him as that means he has to lay his hands off of her and on top of that, Jaclyn is giving him a cold shoulder. Jaclyn knew he is doing his job, but she couldn't help feeling hurt and offended when Eric starts to question her.

What Jaclyn and Eric didn't know is while they are trying to sort out their situations the murderer has moved on to the next unaware target - Jaclyn.

I enjoyed reading Veil of Night and I think Jaclyn and Eric are both very likeable characters. While I think their chemistry and their exchanges are entertaining and add some spice to the story, however on the suspense front it lacks the punch. The whodunnit effect wasn't as great as what I had anticipated; I supposed I wanted a list of suspects for me to guess and to see if my hunch is correct. The real action only began towards the last quarter of the book and while I think there is nothing wrong with this approach, I have to say it somewhat took some of my patience away but suffice to say that the attraction between Jaclyn and Eric is enough to keep me occupied.

I have Linda Howard's latest release, Prey, in my TBR pile and I hope that it would be better on the suspense front.