Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

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I recently finished reading Linda Howard’s Death Angel. This will not be a review, as I have no idea how to go about reviewing this book. If I were to judge on the usual criteria – plot, characterization, prose – it’d be maybe a B or a B-. But the story made an impression on me that surpassed what any mere letter grade could convey. I spent most of the book on a rollercoaster between kind of pissed off and really pissed off. After reading it, I fell into one of my periodic “why is the romance world so hostile to women’s sexuality?” funks.

Warning: I can’t say more without revealing big spoilers for Death Angel. Please do not continue reading this if you plan to read the book and don’t want to be spoiled.

Drea Rosseau is a gangster’s girlfriend and Simon is an assassin. They meet cute when Simon asks the gangster, Salinas, if he can have sex with Drea in lieu of payment for services rendered. Drea, after initially being horrified at the idea, fallz in the luv with Simon from the orgasms and all, which …

I don’t know if this author needs introduction. I feel like I’ve been reading Linda Howard for as long as I’ve read romances. There are so many of her books that I’ve read multiple times. Last year when I met Ms. Howard at RWA, I was pretty star struck. Ironically, I found Howard in person (for the tiny time that I interacted with her) to be more represented by her humorous tales such as Open Season or Mr. Perfect than her darker ones. I know that there will be books that Howard has written that I’ll still be re-reading in 30 years.

Her latest romantic suspense, Death Angel, is in stores now.

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It was December. I don’t remember the exact date, but I think it was Friday. We had stopped to eat dinner after work, even though I had a niggling premonition that an editor named Leslie Wainger would probably be calling very soon to tell me Silhouette was buying my manuscript. I can’t say why I had that little sense of expectation, but …

Dear Ms. Howard:

I was ruminating about this book as I polished up the review. At first I thought, this is a departure for you because it is such a dark book, featuring a very different type of heroine. But you’ve had darker books before (Cry No More) and you’ve featured different types of heroines (Duncan’s Bride) so it’s not really those attributes that set this book apart from the others in the Linda Howard library. I can’t pinpoint it, but this read like a different Linda Howard. Not bad different, just different.

Drea Rousseau is smart woman who made some poor decisions and ended up being the girlfriend of a drug lord. She’s used her body as currency most of her life and when her boyfriend, Rafael Salinas, hands her over as payment to an hired assassin, she’s broken.

It’s not that she loved Salinas nor that she thought of herself so highly. It’s that in the four hours in which the assassin beds her, she feels more and wants more than she has ever in her whole life. She begs him to take her with him …

Dear Ms. Howard:

I am a big fan girl and while I haven’t loved your last few books (okay since Open Season), I still look forward to your new ones. While Up Close and Dangerous isn’t going to sit on my keeper shelf with Dream Man or After the Night or the Kell Sabin series, it still was a good read and more romantic than your previous three.

Widow Bailey Wingate is going on vacation, a much needed one. She’s currently the trustee of her two spoiled stepchildren’s trust funds and these two adult children, Seth and Tamzin, make her life hell. She decides to go on a river rafting excursion with her family and takes a corporate jet from J&L Executive Air Limo to get there. Cam Justice (the J in the J&L) has to step in to fly her when his partner becomes violently ill. Cam dislikes Bailey for being cold and stuckup every time J&L has flown her and Bailey dislikes Cam for acting like a superior ass. While flying over the mountains in …

Dear Ms. Howard:

When it was announced that you would be contributing to the new Silhouette Nocturne line, I could not wait for this book. Some of my favorite Howard romances were categories from MacKenzie’s Mountain to A Game of Chance and the great Kell Sabin series. Sadly, this book was a shadow of a Linda Howard novel. It had all the signature Howard elements: the alpha male, the smart mouthed heroine, and a dash of action; but none of the signature Howard heart.

Dante Raintree is the head of the Raintree clan. He is the leader by virtue of his power. All is well in Raintree world until Dante encounters Lorna Clay. Lorna is consistently winning 5,000 a week in Dante’s casino but no one can figure out how she is doing it. Dante confronts Lorna and immediately guesses that she has some kind of power that is unharnessed. This provides a good reason for Dante to treat Lorna like dirt and abuse her. Their meeting coincides with the Raintree’s bitter rivals, Ansara, launching the first of their ineffectual attempts to kill Dante.

The Raintrees and …

Dear Ms Howard:

I wasn’t really much of a Blair fan the first time around and with any book in the first person, if you don’t love the narrator, you aren’t going to love the book. I didn’t find her as irritating as I did in To Die For, but I don’t think I’m up for a third Blair/Wyatt book.

Blair and Wyatt are engaged but no wedding date has been set because there are so many details to take care of to ensure that the perfect wedding takes place. Wyatt is inpatient to tie the knot and lays down the law and informs Blair that they are getting married in 30 days. If she doesn’t get everything planned by then, he’s marrying her his way (which could be a tacky Vegas wedding).

Blair is up for the challenge and begins to plan her perfect wedding which includes shopping for the perfect shoes. Leaving the shopping center, Blair is nearly run over by a woman in a car. It’s clear to Blair that this was intentional as are the subsequent threatening phone calls. Problem is that Wyatt doesn’t believe …

Dear Ms. Howard:

I know that you won’t be reading this letter as you are not an onliner, but let me tell you about my love for Dream Man. To some, this is a terrible book filled with a terrible betrayal by the hero. To me, it shows the extent I will overlook things when I fall in love with a story.

Marlee Keen is a psychic. She can see the thoughts of people around her. The emotional unstable are unusually strong projectors and because of this Marlie could see crimes as they were being committed. After a terrible ordeal in which Marlee was kidnapped and she was forced to watch while a madman violated a young child, Marlee’s psychic ability left her. Marlee found this to be a blessing. She moved to Orlando and began to build for herself “something safe and solid.” She bought herself a nice little house. Got a job at the bank and lived without feeling anyone else’s emotions but her own.

As she is driving home from the movie theater, she begins to have visions of a grisly murder being committed. …

Dear Ms. Howard,

I've been reading your books since the days when you wrote for Silhouette and I don't plan on stopping. Few authors of romantic suspense deliver great chemistry between their main characters as well and as consistently as you do. There is something so satisfyingly thorough about this aspect of writing: not only do you understand women's enthusiasm for strong, large, and overwhelmingly male creatures, you also have an intuitive grasp of the resounding response men feel in return, or in any case, of what they feel for us in our dreams.

A Linda Howard hero is never going to ignore the woman he is with to watch a Redskins game, even if he is a former linebacker himself. He is simply too focused on her to ignore her for anything. Nor is the fact that his work probably involves killing people who want him dead likely to put him a bleak mood, make him sullen, or bring on a case of PTSD.

That's because a hero in one of your novels is the stuff of female fantasies, fantasies you understand and fulfill so well that I only grumble a little about …

Dear Ms. Howard:

It’s a good thing that you are going back to writing romances because Cover of Night is not a romance. It is a suspense book with a romantic theme. Frankly, it's a shitty not a very good suspense book. The setup, which pits the town of Trail Stop against a band of professional killers, is ridiculous beyond belief strains the edges of credulity.

The first half of the book is spent setting up the conflict. No real action takes place in the first 70 pages. There is little meaningful interaction between Cate and Cal, two of the protagonists (not to mention the most boring sex scene ever in a Linda Howard book). More than half the book is spent in the minds of the antagonists and watching the antagonists get their operation together (and watching it fall apart).

I found it hard to believe that these killers could stay in business or be the “best” when the whole operation turned into a giant mess. The killers were only the “best” because you told me they were. Not because they evinced any abilities to succeed on their …