WICKED

Author: Shannon Drake ISBN: 0373770332 4/2005 HISTORICAL Publisher: HQN
Time Period: Early 1890's England

Camille Montgomery is aware of the wicked man's reputation. But as an expert in antiquities, she also knows his family's Egyptian artifacts are the infest in England. The problem is, her wayward stepfather knows this, too—and he's determined to steal them. So when he's caught in the act of robbing the so-called Beast of Carlyle, Camille must swallow her fear and boldly confront the man whose mask is said to hide a face too loathsome to behold. The Earl of Carlyle has lived in the shadows ever since the suspicious death of this parents. But he's never stopped trying to unravel the mystery behind what he suspects to have been their murder. And now that the lovely Camille has stumbled into his life, he has the perfect pawn for his deadly game of vengeance and deceit. But in laying his ruthless trap, will he risk losing his own heart?

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

By all rights, WICKED should have been at least a Four Rose Read awardee. Many of the elements I look for are here: mystery, suspense, atmosphere, engaging characters, and an independent heroine at odds with a scarred and bitter hero. However, there are two key reasons that kept me from giving WICKED this honor, even though I did sometimes enjoy it.

Let me start off by giving you the best of what WICKED has to offer. For one, Lord Stirling's search for the murderer of his parents gives us plenty of suspects with no sure avenue as to who the real culprit or culprits might be. I missed the boat entirely trying to figure out the villain, and was pleasantly surprised to know I was wrong when the unveiling finally occurred.

I enjoyed most of the characters, including the lead couple, though Brian's housekeeper, Evelyn, sort of stole the show from the cast of supporting characters. Brian, who's the beast in this Beauty and the Beast tale, is, well...okay. He didn't exactly get my pulse going, but when paired with Camille as a couple, he did seem to become a more masculine hero and managed to make this old ticker skip a beat or two.

What really surprised me were some of the more romantic passages in this book. Not as graphically sexually descriptive as most romance novels I read, Ms. Drake has so beautifully described Camille and Brian's passionate encounters—without the use of purple prosed phrases—that, at times, their coupling left me tingly and just a bit breathless. Sometimes it's not what you see (or read), but what you don't, that makes for a more erotic and sensual romantic moment.

Now for my problem with this book, and it is a twofold one. The first, and biggest problem, is the overuse of exclamation points. Much of my reading rhythm and how well I like a book is dependent upon the flow and content of the dialogue. It defines the characters, fleshes out their personalities, and without it their images just become flat words of ink on paper pages.

But in this instance, it's not the dialogue itself that's the problem here. It's the use of that infernal punctuation mark when the characters are conversing. It interrupts the flow, and the characters seem as if they are forever speaking loudly or yelling at each other. More confusing yet, is stumbling upon an exclamation point in a sentence which is immediately followed by the word "said". Maybe it's just me, but those two items together just seem like a total contradiction. I can't put the right inflection on the words in the sentence, and I end up rereading the same conversation over and over again, trying to figure out the tone and mood of the character's voice. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the author for this, as I find more fault with the publisher and publisher's editors, whose job it should be to check this.

The other problem I have with WICKED—not as major as the punctuation, but still important—is the timeframe this story takes place in. It's fine for an author to not designate a specific date in the beginning, such as placing a story in the Regency period, rather than an exact date of 1816. But when an author eventually clues the reader in to the definite year in which the story occurs, then the historic events and characters that are included in this story should fit. It's perfectly fine to meddle with history a bit, to move things about to conform to the story, but do tell the reader you're doing it. There's nothing more distracting than trying to figure out through most of a book just "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego". (For example, what's wrong with this equation: WICKED takes place after the Jack the Ripper murders, during the reign of Queen Victoria, and just when there's a possibility that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon (who has his eye on Howard Carter, so says the author) will be attending a fund raiser for the museum, our heroine finds a newspaper clipping dated 1890, a year after its printing, putting us squarely in the year 1891. And just like those elementary games we played of "what doesn't belong", just what doesn't belong in that sentence?

Enough! WICKED really isn't a bad book. It's just that I can't get past these two niggling points to give it a better grade. If the things I've previously mentioned don't matter in the romances you read, and you're not quite as nit picky about historicals as I am, then I'm sure you'll find WICKED much more to your liking than I did.

Nancy Davis