Brenda Novak's Inside

After reading the dust jacket to this novel I was a bit leery of how the book would unfold. Would it be cheesy, unbelievable, forced, or would it be believable and leave me pleased I read it? Inside is a romantic suspense about, female, Chief Deputy Warden Peyton, of the super-max prison Pelican Bay, who is put in charge of an impossible mission: to infiltrate the Hells Fury gang and find out about a judge’s murder. The informant is to be a man named Virgil, who was recently exonerated and released from a federal prison after 14 years for the supposed murder of his stepfather. As you can see, it is obvious where the love interest is going and the plot is pretty much laid out for you, so it was hard to imagine, other than the logistics of a hopefully excellent steamy romance, how it will actually happen. In the end, I was pleased I had read Inside.

Brenda Novak was able to insert great researched tidbits, paint pictures of life inside and outside of the prison, and inform the reader of why this was such a hard and scary task to accomplish while also adding depth to the characters. I found myself rooting for some of the characters and hoping that others would themselves end up in the prison system by the end of the novel. Another thing I appreciated about Novak’s novel was that she was able to make both sides (the prisoners, gang members, friends, and the various government employees) both good and bad people. It was their nature that was shown and not a political view thrust on the reader.