Sinister Secrets by Traci Hunter Abramson, Clair M Poulson, and Paige Edwards

This is a compilation of short novels by three of Covenant Book's most famous mystery authors. All of them involve a man who is working as some kind of agent, trying to solve some kind of mystery, and ending up saving a girl/woman as well.  In the first, a family man is investigating a money laundering scheme and finds a teenage girl in distress.  In the second an ex-Army Ranger joins a detective agency and helps a woman wrongly accused of murder, and in the third, a woman gets caught up in a FBI drug bust and must escape, with the aid of a handsome agent, the drug lords who don't want any witnesses. 

I haven't read short novellas, and it is interesting how they differ from a full length novel.  For one thing, these were more plot driven than character driven. This is partially because they are mystery stories which are already plot heavy,  but I was surprised how little character development there was.  Also, there was less effort to plug up all the plot holes.  Since they are so short, you just have to take it on faith that certain things make sense. The most surprising thing, however, was not due to their length.  I think it is due to to the fact that the publisher is associated with a conservative Christian organization that still has a pretty strong patriarchy.  So very rarely in modern popular books do you have a woman rescued by a strong male character.  The feisty woman who doesn't need rescuing, and the weak male who does, is such a strong trope in the modern world that few books with a damsel in distress ever gets published by the major publishing houses anymore.  Or maybe they do, but they just aren't the kinds of books I choose to read (ha, ha).  Anyway, it was a bit refreshing.  I think the pendulum has swung a little too far in the direction of "woman power" and needs to swing a little bit back to allow men to be heroes again, at least some of the time. (2022, 304 p)