Recent reads

His Wanted Woman, by Linda Turner. If any scholarly, librarianly, or archival types are obligated to read a genre romance novel for any reason, this might be one to look for. I came across it as a result of an online discussion of an LA Times article about the Archival Recovery Team that tracks down and attempts to recover items stolen from the National Archives which are being offered for sale on the internet or through rare-books dealers. The article vaguely mentioned that this team had been the subject of a "Harlequin romance". A little librarianly cooperation, mixed with some serendipity and a helpful romance writer, identified the "wanted" title.

I have to say that the cover -- viewable at Amazon -- is unsettling in a way that the artist probably did not intend. The man and woman portrayed are attractive individuals, and they appear to be quite fond of each other, but it appears that in order to give a "suspenseful" ambiance to the scene, the artist has bathed both figures in an eerie green glow emanating from below. This, combined with the woman's closed eyes and inert posture, has the unfortunate effect of appearing more necrophilic than suspenseful. Surely this was not the intent. Also, for some reason, a glowing scale model of the US Capitol building and a purple Christmas tree appear to be stuck to the man's elbow.

The book seems to be the first of an intended series dealing with three brothers. The O'Reilly brothers, we find out in a brief prologue, are all strapping, handsome men who work in different branches of law enforcement and all got divorced nearly simultaneously: "A bunch of cops with bad taste in women." They get together on St. Patrick's day for a very masculine brotherly ceremony of drinking beer and tossing their old marriage certificates into the pub bonfire while vowing to "never get married again". Their loving mom, in between cooking delicious lasagna (O'Reilly? lasagna?) meals, helpfully pushes them to find "nice girls". What do you suppose will happen in this volume? And how many books do you suppose the series will include?

I suppose I should not mock the inherent predictability of romance novels. That is, I take it, what many romance readers expect: the reassurance that Things Will Work Out, that there are Happy Endings in which a Good Woman and a Good Man are irresistably drawn to each other and find a way to Live Happily Ever After despite all the betrayals, bitterness, and fears that dog them as individuals, and despite every worldly obstacle that rears up to oppose them. The fact that reality does not always follow this script no doubt only increases the hunger to have it confirmed in fiction. And why should I condemn or mock that desire for reassurance? Is it really any more laughable than the innumerable fantasy and SF epics in which obscure country bumpkins rise to overthrow dictatorial overlords whose armies have overrun the known world/universe? Both posit, indeed insist on, reassuringly happy endings that readers crave.

But enough generalia. In the volume at hand, once the prologue is past, we find ourselves meeting Mackenzie Sloan, a smart young woman who has recently acquired a master's degree in an unspecified subject, broken up with a boyfriend, lost her father, and inherited the latter's livelihood, a rare-books store in Washington, D.C. Shortly after she reopens the shop, a dark-haired "hunk" walks in with a improbably rare document to sell, and an even more improbable story to explain his possession of it. He's one of the O'Reilly brothers, naturally, the one who works for the Archival Recovery Team, and he's checking her out. Checking out her honesty, that is. He's checking to see if the current proprietor of the store will buy tempting items of suspicious provenance, because it turns out that some of her father's inventory that she's recently sold on eBay was stuff that should have stayed in the Archives. Is she a thief? Was her father a thief? Or a duped victim who bought stolen documents? Where did they come from, and will the investigation tarnish her good name and damage her business?

In any case, the two of them are very shortly checking out more than just each other's credentials, the more so when she is impelled to seek police protection after someone breaks into her store and steals, not books or maps, but routine business paperwork. Each has fears and bitterness from the past to overcome before becoming emotionally involved, although the physical sparks of attraction are flying in short order, along with some hints of mild kinkiness. (Something about handcuffs...)

I found the characters interesting and the story entertaining. I would have liked more emphasis on the process by which historical documents wind their way through the labyrinthine, sometimes clandestine world of archival institutions, dealers, and collectors. I would have liked to have seen more detailed description of how the Archival Recovery Team identified and tracked such documents, and I would have enjoyed reading at greater length about the investigation of the particular case at hand. The resolution of the case, though unfortunately plausible, seemed rather sudden and deus-ex-mechanical. It so happens that I subscribe to the school of thought that in a well-plotted mystery novel, the criminal, when revealed, must be a character who has been previously introduced in the story, and whom the reader has had fair chance to consider as a suspect.

But this is not, of course, primarily a mystery novel, and I fear that I am not part of its prime target demographic. The primary emphasis is on the exposition and expulsion of the personal demons of the two romantic principals, and their growing involvement with each other. This is, in fact, quite well done. But of all the people who read His Wanted Woman, I wonder if I am the only one who started getting impatient with the descriptions of lusciously soft lips, hungry kisses, and pounding hearts, and looked forward to the next chapter in which the erotically enflamed investigators pulled themselves away from each others' arms and delved once more into tracking the prospective buyers of a stolen presidential diary or hand-scribbled Civil War map.