M.J. Rose The Delilah Complex

The Delilah Complex

M.J. Rose

Mira, Jan 2006, $6.99

ISBN: 0778322157

Sex therapist Morgan Snow wants to move past the notoriety gained when she stopped a serial killer (see THE HALO EFFECT). However, her reputation has reached the powerful members of the Scarlet Society, a group of wealthy females who like being dominant in sexual encounters with willing males. The group is in panic mode because someone sent pictures to the New York Times reporter Betsy Young of a brutalized corpse of submissive Philip Maur, Chief Operating Officer of Wall St. firm Grimley & Maur. Tthey ask Morgan to investigate the Maur murder.

NYPD Detective Noah Jordain leads the official investigation, by has a hunch that the reporter is not fully cooperating with him. He wonders if Young prefers the headlines rather than stopping the killer, who he believes will murder again because of the 1 painted on the victim's chest. He is proven correct when pictures of 2 and 3 are sent to Young. Meanwhile the Scarlet Society members are concerned with being discovered, but Morgan thinks that is inevitable because she concludes that one of these women has taken to snuffing out the male submissives perhaps for the ultimate dominant sexual pleasure.

THE DELILAH COMPLEX is an exciting who-done-it that grips the audience from the opening scene when the normally never scared Maur is frightened to death and never slows down until the Tylenol epilogue between mother and teen daughter. The story line is action-packed, but the cast makes the thriller work. Besides obviously Noah and Morgan who investigate the homicides, the dominant females and their submissive males provide an intriguing gender bending BDSM scene that is implied rather then explicit. M.J. Rose's Snow-Butterfield Institute tales are some of the more exciting series on the market today.

Harriet Klausner