Eve Silver

Historical/19th Century Gothic

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Sensuality:
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Workplace romances can be complicated.

First, there's the lure of forbidden fruit. Everyone knows you don't harass a co-worker. But when the attraction is mutual, giving in to office passion feels deliciously naughty.

Then comes the corporate courtship: furtive glances at department meetings, double entendre-loaded emails, lovely stolen moments by the Hewlett-Packard.

Involved with your boss? Now you've got balance of power issues as well as co-workers who assume you're getting special treatment.

In 19th Century England, a working girl involved romantically with her employer dealt with similar issues -- sometimes even creepier ones -- as does the heroine of "Dark Desires," the intriguing and entertaining new novel by Eve Silver.

Darcie Finch has fallen on hard times indeed when she's turned away from a brothel and out onto dismal streets with nothing but the name of a man who might provide work -- Dr. Damien Cole. The madam who sends her to his home does so with a warning: he's man to fear, one with macabre secrets best left unearthed.

But what could Darcie possibly have to fear from the brilliant Dr. Cole? He's a looker, he gives her a job working at his side in his anatomy lab, and he turns her knees weak with a kind word or a brush of his skilled surgeon's hand.

Well, there are one or two pesky questions which nag the conscience of a smart woman like Darcie Finch -- just where does the good doctor get the corpses he dissects, and, for that matter, where was he the night yet another in a series of gruesome murders was committed among the wretched stews of Whitechapel?

Darcie's certain of where Damien Cole was shortly before the slaying took place -- in her arms, in his bed, yielding along with her to the carnal attraction they'd shared from the first.

"Dark Desires" has all the elements we love about the Gothic romance: eerie, desolate environs, a beautiful heroine torn between trusting and fearing her lover, and, of course, blood and dismemberment.

But it's fresher, a Neo-Gothic, if you will; no way is Darcie Finch Too Stupid To Live. And Damien Cole, while outré, doesn't have that mad scientist thing going on. If anything, Silver's particularly effective at drawing Cole's precise, intellectual nature as counterpoint to the sensual animal within.

That's because Silver's a thoughtful writer who cares about the evocative prose she creates. And she's considerate of her readers -- I think she understands we get a kick out of our adoration for this somewhat campy genre, and giggles along with us while dishing up the divinely grotesque by the ladleful.

The sensual tension in "Dark Desires," like the sense of dread throughout, is so thick one could incise it with a bloody scalpel. I couldn't wait to read what would happen next, and I think you'll feel the same when you …

Buy the Book.

Visit www.evesilver.net for excerpts from "Dark Desires," and for more info about "Newbie" author Eve Silver's bright future in Romance.

Next Week's Review and AuthorView: "Flawless," by Michele Hauf.