Deadly Pleasure

TEST

It’s a good thing Brenda Joyce keeps telling us just how smart heroine Francesca Cahill is, because otherwise the reader might have good cause to wonder.

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For instance, in Deadly Pleasure, the second in Joyce’s Francesca Cahill series, our heroine keeps critical information from the police, gets into the middle of a serious marital disagreement between her sister and brother-in-law, and foolishly investigates alone the home of someone she has good reason to believe is a murderer. But, in spite of the less than overwhelming brains of Francesca herself, Brenda Joyce is so talented that I think there’s a good chance many readers will find Deadly Pleasure to be enjoyable in a guilty pleasure kind of way.

Francesca, the spoiled (and I do mean spoiled) daughter of a millionaire and his society wife, lives a picture-perfect life in New York City just after the turn of the century. But, Francesca is anything but the kind of empty-headed society debutante she scorns – she is, in fact, a secret college student and, in her own words, a “crime-solver extraordinaire.” Francesca came to this new career by chance in Deadly Love, the first entry in the series, where she also met Rick Bragg (yes, one of those Braggs, from Joyce’s popular historical sagas), New York’s new police commissioner. Not surprisingly, the sparks flew.

In Deadly Pleasure the mystery at the heart of the story is the murder of a man found dead in the home of his mistress. Francesca finds herself literally at the scene of the crime when the mistress herself, a woman to whom she earlier gave her card, summons her there. Rick is furious when he discovers Francesca at the scene and even more furious when she continues to investigate the crime against his very specific requests. As the plot twists and turns, a new (and very sexy) character is introduced: Rick’s half-brother, Calder Hart, a man with a decidedly intimate connection to the victim who soon finds himself a suspect in the murder.

Deadly Pleasure is a page-turner, and would, with a more mature and less ditzy heroine, rate a much higher grade. Francesca is so very young – both in chronological years and in experience – that it’s tough for a mature reader to stomach. A passionate reformer and a dedicated blue-stocking in the way that only a young woman who has never been tested can be, there is no doubt that her heart is in the right place. But her youthful impetuousness and her serene – if misplaced – confidence in her own abilities caused this reader to cringe time after time. She is also incredibly sexually naïve, and that also, despite its historical accuracy, grates.

I should also point out that the sensuality rating for this book is based solely on one steamy sexual encounter between Calder Hart and a lady of the evening. It seems peculiarly out of place in this otherwise very chaste book.

But, with all of that said, the story itself is a very good one; Joyce’s writing is, as always, crisp and compelling; and I do like both Rick and Calder. And, despite her immaturity, Francesca wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying the book – and in recommending it to others.

I will permit myself, however, one small sigh. Brenda Joyce is the author of some of the finest historical romances I have ever read and I do hope we will see more of them in the future.

Reviewed by Sandy Coleman

Grade: B-

Book Type: Historical Mystery

Sensuality: Hot

Review Date: 17/02/02

Publication Date: 2002

Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

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