Divine Fire
Melanie Jackson
Love Spell, Feb 2005, $6.99
ISBN: 0505526107

Book critic Damien Ruthven is shocked at how accurate the eighteen-hundred page manuscript written by author Brice Ashton is. However, he also feels that two points in the biography need correcting as she is slightly in error on his affair with Lady Caroline Lamb and on a poem he wrote to her. Out of character and shocking his assistant Karen Anderson, he invites author Brice Ashton to America to discuss her first of three overpriced tomes on the life of Lord Byron. Excited, Brice accepts the invitation, believing that her host has access to documents she has not seen.

The bad news is that Damien has no documents. The good news is that he knew Byron intimately because in 1816, Dr. Johann Dippel "cured" the aristocratic poet of epilepsy; Damien was Byron back in the early nineteenth century. As the critic and the writer feel a growing attraction to one another, his invitation inadvertently also brings danger to his guest as killers want Byron dead with collateral damage acceptable.

DIVINE FIRE is a fantastic, suspenseful, romantic fantasy starring two wonderful protagonists even if a book reviewer and an author make strange bedfellows. Especially interesting is Damien's look back to his past that comes alive in such a manner that the audience will believe that Dr. Dippel cured his patient. This in turn leads readers to expect Melanie Jackson to provide sequels starring other patients of Dr. Dippel.

Harriet Klausner