LaCaritilie's introduction lacks sufficient comparative context for the general reader – at whom this anthology is aimed – to know if he is justif...More

While helping out in her sister’s hotel, university lecturer Claire meets Jim Hyde, who recognises her as a submissive waiting to happen and sets about introducing her to the darker side of her sexuality. While Claire becomes ever more wrapped up in Jim and his kinky sex games, it becomes increasingly obvious that he has secrets he is unwilling to share with her. Has he been in prison? Is he involved in shady business deals? Should Claire be falling quite so far and so fast into a world where only lust and physical sensation matters?
Wing Of Madness is more unsettling than some of Black Lace’s recent offerings, dealing as it does with deception and a descent into obsession and even the beginnings of mental illness. While the erotic action is hot and features edgy behaviour including dogging and having sex in Canterbury Cathedral, any storyline involving a woman wrapped up with a man who is possibly a criminal is going to suffer in comparison to Kristina Lloyd’s Black Lace classic Asking For Trouble. This is a promising debut, but Jim and Claire have a tendency to make speeches rather than talk to each other and the ending, which could have been really dark, seems like a little bit of a cop-out...
Elizabeth Coldwell

By Mae Nixon
Black Lace, £7.99