Deadly Affairs: A John Anderson Mystery (Crime & Passion)

Rating:
Summary: Crima and Passion an awkward mix
Review: Deadly Affairs is the second book in a new imprint by Virgin called Crime and Passion. Virgin is famous for the famous Black Lace series of erotica. The point of the new imprint is to mix erotica with crime fiction. Too bad it doesn't work. The "sexy bits" seem like they were just added to fulfill guidelines (erotica must have 50% sex scenes). The story itself is okay, not a very complicated mystery at all. A womanizing executive is killed and the hero, John Anderson finds out that there are many people with a reason to kill. The sex scenes are well written, but they add nothing to the book except to make it a bit naughty. I won't even go into the cold, controling "hero" or the slutty female executive or the sexually repressed diviorcee. Too cliched to bother with. Hopefully as the imprint grows, the books will get better. I think mysteries can be very sexy. I'll keep reading the Crime and Passion series in hopes of a better read.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly delightful plot and character development.
Review: It is always a pleasure to find a book of any genre written with a tight, suspense plot and with characters who are complex, like real people. This book was more suspenseful than most "mystery/suspense" novels found at airports and booksellers, and the sex scenes are not only well done but develop the story. My enjoyment was slightly puzzling, however, because I found the lead character, John Anderson, someone who hopefully would get brought down a peg or two. I found myself liking the secondary characters better than the "hero."

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly delightful plot and character development.
Review: It is always a pleasure to find a book of any genre written with a tight, suspense plot and with characters who are complex, like real people. This book was more suspenseful than most "mystery/suspense" novels found at airports and booksellers, and the sex scenes are not only well done but develop the story. My enjoyment was slightly puzzling, however, because I found the lead character, John Anderson, someone who hopefully would get brought down a peg or two. I found myself liking the secondary characters better than the "hero."

Rating:
Summary: Good starting point for this series.
Review: This is the first of the 'A John Anderson mystery' series of books published under the 'Crime and Passion' label.

John Anderson is introduced as a DCI in his early forties who seems to like the finer things in life, going by the authors description of his abode, attire and automobile.

Divorced from a wealthy woman and with no children to worry about, he likes to live life comfortably, although not in an arrogant way which makes him a character that this reader is sympathetic towards.

In contrast, as is the case with the other books in this series that I have read, the victim of the murder is a character that you feel would have got their comeuppance at some point in life, even had they survived the phase covered in the book.

So, when the partner of a successful company is found in his fume-filled Porsche, Anderson is brought in to investigate and finds under the surface the usual network of greed and dislike, with no love being lost among the main participants.

The pace of the story is not particularly quick, but this reader retained sufficient interest to make it to the end of the book, although I feel that the identity of the killer is revealed (to the reader) a little early, with the remainder of the book being read to discover the details of the events that led up to the death rather than who did it.

This book only receives three stars not because it is lacking in anything in particular, although the plot is simpler than in subsequent episodes, merely because other books in the series are better in different ways.

The 'Crime and Passion' series is billed as 'Detective stories for grown-ups' (read: explicit sex) but I have found that the sex scenes are no more explicit/unusual than in other novels, so would recommend these novels purely as crime books, set in the UK in contemporary times.