A gripping, titillating amalgam of provocative, interpersonal melodrama and effective noir thriller.
A debut suspense novel charts the disappearance of a disenchanted former wife and the slow reveal of her furtive, fetishized sex life.
Jenson’s dynamic tale chronicles the troubled marriage of Paul and Deliah, a six-year union that has pretty much run its course. Sexually, Paul, nearly 30 years old and a self-described “vanilla boy of supreme proportions,” has been rigidly faithful and more than willing to please his struggling actor wife. But Deliah’s orgasms have always been a rarity and leave her unsatisfied and her husband feeling inadequate. Finally, she decides she’s had enough and leaves Paul via a kitchen-counter Post-it, and their life together in Southern California dissolves in a swirl of divorce papers. Abandoning his video game designing job, Paul sells his condo, buys an RV, and becomes obsessed with finding Deliah through a complex, mysterious labyrinth of whispered leads and tips; extramarital adventures; secret histories; and hidden pasts. There’s also plenty of action in a series of warehouse sex clubs where bondage rituals increase in intensity, which lends the story a kind of graphic, raunchy edge of fetish erotica. Paul tries to extract answers from John Laster, the last individual to personally interact with Deliah. But John delivers tragic news and further ignites Paul’s determination to avenge his ex-wife’s disappearance. Soon, a slinky submissive named Alex appears on the scene and is immediately thrust into a “slave” role, dutifully pleasuring Paul, whom she refers to as her new “Master.” It becomes a part Paul eventually makes peace with and ultimately relishes as his attraction to Alex deepens and she feels comfortable enough to reveal her identity as transgender. A strong undercurrent of vigilante justice, sex trafficking, rape, and abuse runs beneath the tale and shows Paul to have become quite a formidable presence when compared with the man he once was as Deliah’s husband.
Though at times the prose is overly stylized—a deceived Paul laments that “all my accumulated knowledge had been distorted and manipulated, baked in the oven of delusion”—the narrative remains unapologetic for its sheer sense of bawdy sexuality and an unrestrained depiction of BDSM master and submissive play in “full bondage regalia.” The disorienting surprise and confusion when attempting to understand a loved one who turns out to have a secret life are also handled with realistic frenzy, apprehension, understandable anger, and just a touch of suspense. The story is further energized by the main character’s realistic and unrehearsed dialogue, believable actions toward finding his ex-wife, and his slowly revealed, abusive childhood. The dark novel succeeds on several levels. As an erotic thriller, it includes lots of vividly aggressive, sexually explicit details of both the fetish clubs’ scenes and Paul’s lovemaking with Alex. And as a noir suspense novel/mystery, it features a well-paced plot and a simmering momentum. As the protagonist, Paul is believable as a desperate man eager to rekindle his marriage to a gorgeous woman who is clearly out of his league. He is a character who becomes increasingly self-aware as the story progresses, discovering more and more about himself as a man, a former husband, and a sexual being in ways he’d never imagined.
A gripping, titillating amalgam of provocative, interpersonal melodrama and effective noir thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9651190-7-8
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Furthest Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.
Travel writer Lo Blacklock is back. Ten years after the events of The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), she's attending the opening of a lavish Swiss hotel when, once again, a mystery intervenes.
A decade after she almost died on a luxury cruise and ended up exposing a murder plot, travel journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is trying to get back into the business post-Covid-19 and post–maternity leave. When she's invited to an exclusive hotel launch by the Leidmann Group on the shores of Switzerland’s gorgeous Lake Geneva, her supportive husband, Judah, insists that she should go, and her old boss, Rowan, says that if Lo can score an interview with the reclusive Marcus Leidmann, she’ll publish it in the Financial Times. Leaving Judah and the kids at home in New York, Lo is surprised by a last-minute upgrade to first class, which kicks off her trip in style. The hotel is appropriately awe-inspiring in both scenic location and effortless luxury, and Lo starts to put the memories of last trip’s trauma behind her, thinking that maybe she can just enjoy the experience this time. But then, at dinner, she's surprised to see at least three guests who were also on that original cruise, and when she finds a mysterious note in her room saying "Please come to suite 11 as soon as possible," she gets another shock. To quote William Faulkner, she realizes that “the past is never dead,” and soon Lo is careening across Europe on her way to England, only to find herself embroiled in another murder. The back half of the novel offers her the opportunity to continue her amateur sleuthing, and while she avoids much of the physical danger that plagued her on the cruise a decade ago, she is in very real legal trouble. This is the prolific Ware’s first sequel, and it's fun to spend time with Lo again, as she's both savvy and kindhearted. Unfortunately, the mystery is not as atmospheric and gripping as usual for Ware, though even a lesser Ruth Ware thriller is still worth reading.
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781668025628
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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