Miranda Steele's ex-husband (a policeman with dodgy and powerful connections) has her newborn baby adopted without her consent. As no-one believes her, she reinvented herself as a tough and skillful construction worker that travels all over the states, always hopeful to find her daughter 1 day. Then someday she's contacted by an agency that reunites adopted (adult) children with their birthparents. They received a letter from a 13 year old girl who's born in the same place and time as her daughter Amy. Knowing nothing else but the Atlanta-neighbourhood the girl lives in, Miranda packs up and leaves for Georgia. During her wild goose chase she spies on several girls and behaves suspicious enough to attrackt police attention. While trying to run from the cops, she more or less stumbles on the corpse of another girl that was missing for a week. Now she ends up in jail with murder charges! No-one is gonna believe her story but the steaming hot, extremely clever PI. He gets her a bigshot lawyer friend to defend her and later hires her as trainee PI ...

There's my main criticism about this book. From their very first encounter it's clear thar Wade and Miranda will end up in bed together. But a PI working for the victims family getting a lawyer for the police's main suspect (at that time) ??? There's also a 'my fair lady' reversed theme where the heroine changes from boxer to elegant lady in a week.

Also the ending was a bit disappointing as I found it rather far-fetched and not very logical.

Apart from that I really liked the book and the heroine. The writing was so vivid that the descriptions of the culinary concoctions made my mouth water