Troubleshooters

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The Troubleshooters series by Suzanne Brockmann is combined Romance Novel, mystery, and military. The books feature:

(a) SEAL Team Sixteen and its members, both current and former.

(b) FBI agents

(c) The Troubleshooters, a private security firm made up of ex-FBI agents, ex-SEALS, and former members of law enforcement.

The series is known for its extended arcs and for featuring two romances per book. The primary romance is guaranteed to work out, but the secondary romance will most likely be an arc that continues into later books before it hits full culmination.

Tropes used in Troubleshooters include:

• A Father to His Men: Tom Paoletti.
• Abusive Parents: Roger Starrett, Sr.
• Battle Couple: a lot of couples in this series count as this, but Sam and Alyssa are the first and most prominent.
• Brainless Beauty: Mary Lou and Tracy, both of whom get Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Bury Your Gays: Ben, but he is away at war at the time, so it's more justified.
• Cold Sniper: Alyssa originally, before she joined the FBI.
• Command Roster and The Squad
• Crazy Survivalist: arguably Donny Da Costa, who's made enough money off the Internet so that he never has to leave his house again. Where he stays in his closet with enough food and water, his laptop, his tinfoil hat... Troubled Fetal Position and No Medication for Me also come up for him.
• Cunning Linguist: Nils
• Dogged Nice Guy: Dave
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Sam and Alyssa in Gone Too Far.
• Gay Best Friend: Jules to Alyssa and Sam.
• Genius Bruiser: Ken Karmody.
• Hidden Depths: Whitney, who turns out not to be as much of a Spoiled Brat as you thought she was. Also is excellent with a rifle.
• Hostage Situation: Meg gets forced to take hostages. Also done with a Plane Full Of Innocents, and one Innocent Bystander, Gina, pretending to be the particular hostage the bad guys want. Max is the hostage negotiator in the situation, which is how they meet.
• Love Triangle: see Wrong Guy First, but Dave, Decker, and Sophia is a pretty prominent one as well.
• Mama Bear: Mary Lou.
• May-December Romance: A number of them, though unusually the 'December' is often the woman. Molly and Jones, Joan and Mike (a seven year difference only, but she's very bothered by it), Meg and John (another smaller age difference, but she's very bothered by it; a Double Standard in that she's not bothered by her husband being about fifteen years older than her). Also Gina and Max, whose older and bothered by it.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: Ihbraham.
• Mugging the Monster: Jules looks like an easy target. He isn't.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Roger Starrett hates being named after his father (see above), so he's gone by Ringo, Houston, and Sam (the most well known one).
  • From Gone Too Far: "It's someone named Sam or Roger or Ringo -- he wasn't too clear on which one it was -- and he says to tell you it's an emergency?"
• Parental Abandonment: plenty of examples. Most shocking is Sophia's case, where her parents abandoned her in their apartment in Katmandu when she was eleven. Good thing she could pass for a boy...
• Our Presidents Are Different: President Bryant is a President Personable.
• Rape as Drama: Gina and Janine
• Sexy Secretary: Tracy
• Southern-Fried Private: Sam, though he has hidden depths, comes off as one when you meet him.
• Starbucks Skin Scale
• Stereotype Flip: Ihbraham looks like a terrorist, and isn't. "Bob Schlegel", a.k.a. Warren Canton and Husaam Abdul-Fataah, on the other hand, is a Western Terrorist who gets away with lots of murder because he was born a blond, blue-eyed Midwest boy.
• Invisible to Gaydar: Robin, who takes awhile to realize this. After he does, he starts recovering from being ...
• The Alcoholic: Robin, Mary Lou, Ihbraham, Sam's mother, Brooke Bryant
• The Baby Trap: Mary Lou pulls this on Sam, and eventually realizes how wrong she was to do it.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Donny is always spotting aliens around the neighborhood. One of whom turns out to be an actual terrorist.
• The Medic: Jay
• The Neidermeyer: Admiral Tucker, nemesis to Tom Paoletti.
• The Quiet One: Cosmo. Little does anyone know he's a PFLAG member, has a gay dad and a mom who loves showtunes.
• The War on Terror: The SEALS and other characters deal with it fairly regularly.
• Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
• Wedding Day: Two interesting examples used in the books:
  • After Tom is imprisoned in Gone Too Far, his longtime girlfriend Kelly (who refused to remarry through the previous five books) finally has to sneak in a wedding so she can have access to him. "Honeymoon night" is held with guards nearby.
  • All Through the Night is about the various dramas- and there are a lot of them- leading up to the wedding day of Jules and Robin.
• Wild Card: Ken Karmody, it's even his nickname.
• World War II- Suzanne Brockmann loves WWII and looks for any excuse she can to slip in references to it. In earlier books in the series, the secondary plots would take place during WWII and have a tangential reference to the first plot.
• Wrong Guy First: Done with both genders. Adam for Robin and Jules, and Mary Lou for Sam and Alyssa. Also Decker for Sophia (and vice versa).