Tangled Web UK Review November 2000
On Tenderness Express by
Maxim Jakubowski
pbk out July 00
(Do Not Press)
at £7.5
Private detective Martin Jackson is at a low point in his life, when he is engaged on two cases. A man wants his missing wife tracking down; a woman wants her missing sister finding--- not because she is missing, but because she has stolen a rare book. And she wants it back. However, nothing is what it seems to be. To begin with the narrator says quite candidly at the beginning that he is a liar, an unreliable witness, and he does not care whether the reader believes him or not.
The story he tells is a story of perversion. The two sisters are mistress and slave, dominatrix and submissive. It is the submissive who has stolen the book. Tracking her down takes Martin to Amsterdam and New Orleans. It is there that he meets Cornelia, a stripper who moonlights as an assassin to pay for rare books. She is on her last job. This, such as it is, is the plot.
None of the characters are sympathetic. The 'hero' and 'heroine' to have no morality at all. Although Martin takes the money from the husband, he has no intention of doing any work for it. We learn why, as the plot proceeds. It is a novel de Sade would have been proud to claim as his own. It is disturbing, particularly the sexual scenes and descriptions of the cruelty meted out to the sexual slaves. Well written, but not for me, I'm afraid.
(
J.O.
)
