Barbara Phinney

Barbara Phinney writes Canadian romance and suspense shaped in part by her military background and an interest in duty, danger, and earned trust. Hard Target, published in 2012, places Sergeant Dawna Atkinson at a South American embassy where a bombing exposes both security failures and unresolved history with former instructor Tay Hastings. As further attacks threaten the staff, the two must work together despite professional scrutiny and the consequences of an earlier relationship. Phinney served in the Canadian Armed Forces before turning to fiction, and her bibliography includes romantic suspense, inspirational suspense, and the medieval-set Warrior trilogy. That range lets her move between contemporary operations and historical settings while retaining protagonists who must reassess responsibility under pressure. Hard Target is a standalone romantic suspense novel rather than part of the later Warrior sequence. Its embassy setting and paired investigation make it a clear example of Phinney's interest in capable characters whose emotional reconciliation develops alongside an external security crisis.