Lynn Kerstan, Dangerous Deceptions

Dangerous Deceptions

Lynn Kerston

Onyx, Nov 2004, $6.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0451212487

Lord Jarrett Dering receives a letter demanding he account for his sins and meet at a chop house. He ignores the invitation, but the author visits Jarrett asking him to go to the exclusive estate Paradise at the bequest of the mysterious Black Phoenix. Though he would prefer to say no, Jarrett agrees to visit this renowned den of iniquity.

In Paradise, actress Gaetana makes Jarrett look silly as well as sexually frustrating him in front of a packed house. Later she wears a mask when she meets him in private to inform him she is his partner. Jarrett tells her he knows from her smell that she is Gaetana, but calls her Kate from the Taming of the Shrew. As they work undercover (figuratively and literally) together to expose Carrington and he makes public displays of his sexual power over her, they fall in love. However, Carrington and his minion have killed before and will do again if they strip bare either identity.

The strong lead characters must put on a sexual pretense in public, but fall in love in private. Thus, readers will take delight with this fine amateur sleuth investigation in which the hero fakes abuse of the heroine to gain access to the inner secrets of Paradise. Though the last forty or so pages occur after the good guys win seemingly too easily and come across as two padded unnecessary subplots, fans will appreciate Lynn Kerston's erotic Regency romance and seek out her animal tales (see THE GOLDEN LEOPARD; HEART OF THE TIGER, and THE SILVER LION).

Harriet Klausner