Having met Nikki Siriene, an exotic lady who uses her body
to uncover information, in a previous book I really hoped
she would find a better life. From A Taste of Honey her
tale continues in A TOUCH OF HONEY but alas, Nikki's
choices are not easy.
Nikki has been quietly tending bar in New York, hiding
from
her former controller Chris Carpenter who turned out to be
more into control and brutality than intel. Someone who
knows Chris finds her. Los Zetas, a Mexican crime cartel,
is running forced prostitution rings in New York and
Baker,
the man tasked with putting together a group to infiltrate
them, claims that police and city officials are touchy
about racially-targeted police operations. He offers Nikki
the chance to work for him by seducing a member of the
gang
and getting him to turn evidence. Freeing a few girls
won't
stop the evil trade.
We'd all like such slavery to be stopped, but how
dangerous
would it be for someone to try doing it? Nikki thinks she
knows, and thinks she'd be doing a good thing. She should
have run a mile. Instead the Creole beauty signs up for
the
team support she should have had but didn't in her
previous
work, learning to create field reports, putting herself in
danger. We see Nikki in nightclubs a great deal, as her
Mexican employers present themselves as businessmen to
lure
in clients for the seedy trade. She's obliged to bed one,
then picked up by another whose tastes run to dominance
and
submission. Privately she thinks that these men's views
of
women are entirely informed by porn. But other women,
tattooed by the gangs who terrorise them, have no choices
in life.
There's considerable strong language and sexual scenes, so
this tale won't be for everyone. The cold eye cast on the
brutal trade removes any suggestion of titillation while
Nikki's reports and analysis make her a strong, clear-
headed operator. I thought there were a few too many
flashbacks to events which occurred over a year before,
especially since everyone but Nikki seems to have written
them off. However Nikki uses her tortured thoughts as a
reminder that she could be murdered every time she meets a
cartel player.
Gamal Hennessey lives in New York City and his thrillers
are a combination of spy action with psychological chill
and sexual tension. In Nikki Siriene he has created a
strong and memorable character who finally starts to
escape
a background of abuse and control her own choices, though
those choices don't include a huge measure of security.
The Crime and Passion series, especially A TOUCH OF
HONEY, shows us the flipside of the sex clubs featuring in
supposed romance books, with all too hard a reality check.
Read it if you like adult thrillers and capable women.
In seduction, control is surrender and surrender is
control.
Nikki Sirene uses her sexual charms to manipulate men and
steal their secrets. She lives in constant fear because
the man who used to love her is now trying to kill her.
Desperate for protection, she agrees to a relationship of
mutual exploitation with a mysterious spy named Warren
Baker. He agrees to protect her from her enemies if she
agrees to help take down a sex slave operation in New
York.
Entering into this world of depravity and pain pushes
Nikki to the edge of sanity. Can she escape with her
freedom and her life, or will she become just another
human trafficking statistic?
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