Hi everyone. It’s Mr. Milan again. Usually I just review Courtney’s books, but as you will see this is half review, half investigative journalism. You will understand the necessity for this when I reach the end.

As you may know, my past reviews of my wife Courtney’s work have been, on the whole, negative. Not that I don’t love Courtney. I do. It’s just that as a book reviewer, I have to call them as I see them. With her past work, there just wasn’t enough of the things that I liked to warrant a positive review.

Let me remind everyone where I’m coming from: I’m an avid reader of fiction, just not the kind of fiction Courtney usually writes. My tastes tend toward fantasy, sci-fi, and spy novels. I’ve read everything China Mieville’s ever published, I have a whole shelf of Barry Eisler’s books, and I’ll even, if it isn’t too vapid and mopey, read the occasional work of literary fiction (a good recent example is Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel).

So, blessed (burdened?) with this background, I turned to Courtney’s new novel, Trial by Desire. I read it from cover to cover.

As a reviewer I try to keep an open mind, but you do sometimes judge an author by her previous books.  I had certain expectations when I came to this book. I am sure you can guess what those are by my previous reviews and that’s because you are judging me by those too. You are expecting me to say that this book sucked.

This book didn’t suck.

I checked the front and the book was still a couple sharing a torrid embrace. I checked the name and it was still Courtney Milan. A less secure individual might next have checked his pants to see if his manhood was still intact.

You may be surprised by my less than wholly negative review. But you really shouldn’t be. Trial was full of good action scenes, and they were well-written. The hero, Ned Carhart, isn’t afraid to mix it up, and Courtney, to her credit, isn’t afraid to write about it. Ned confronts rampaging horses, makes witty comments while held at gunpoint, and punches out the villain several times. He’s actually a great hero. I can see why the heroine would admire him.

Especially because the heroine’s not bad herself. Kathleen Carhart commands respect, because she’s willing to stand up for what she thinks is right. And she’s willing to risk more than just social humiliation or financial disappointment in order to win the man she loves. She’s a lot like Ned–she’ll face real danger if she has to, and that’s cool.

This book had more action in it than William Gibson’s latest book, Zero History. All of this made me wonder: what happened? How did someone who wrote the Sherman-Tank-deprived Proof by Seduction come up with a book that I enjoyed? This is where the investigative journalism part comes in.

Romance novels are often unfairly maligned for adhering to predictable formulae, the most common being the happy ending with the protagonists together in everlasting love. For me, that’s not a problem. Many other kinds of genre fiction are just as predictable — when was the last time the sleuth in a genre mystery failed to solve the crime? Following a convention that defines the genre isn’t cause for complaint.

Besides nobody knows more than me how hard Courtney works. I heard her swearing up a storm over this book. It wasn’t easy for her to write. But I’m her husband, and I was around when she was working on this book. I have access to the notes that she keeps in boxes in the basement. And after reading the book and having that weird positive reaction, I just couldn’t help but get suspicious.

It’s not that Courtney used a formula to help her write this book. Before you read on, make sure you are sitting down and remove any small children from the vicinity because this might be disturbing.

Courtney actually used algebra.

I am writing this review at the kitchen table with a sheaf of papers spread in front of me filled with mathematical calculations that I am convinced are her deriving this book from first principles. I don’t know how she did it, but here is a snippet of proof–and remember I have reams and reams of paper containing items like this.

I hope you are as shocked as I am by this undeniable proof that Courtney is blatantly writing her books to a formula. I do have to admit that it is a very complicated formula and that she used a lot of them. I feel equally confident that other romance writers don’t do this. Nonetheless it explains my initial positive reaction to this book.

My enjoyment of the book was dulled considerably by this discovery.

Three Sherman Tanks.

It’s Courtney again. Thank you, Mr. Milan, for that…uh…very kind review filled with scurrilous lies.

Hello again. I’m Mr. Milan, Courtney’s husband. She’s asked me to read and review her debut novel, Proof by Seduction, even though my review of her novella was less than stellar.

Maybe Courtney thinks this time I’ll succumb to the temptation to speak well of her novel for the sake of domestic peace. Maybe she hopes my tastes have changed, that a story without any swordplay, without any characters attempting to vanquish their enemies by force, without an ending that pays the price of the hero and heroine’s triumph in gallons of spilled blood, will magically earn a good review from me.

Though I love her dearly, Courtney thinks wrong. I read Proof by Seduction from cover to cover, and I thought it sucked.

Courtney’s biggest failing is that she consistently fails to focus on the most interesting parts of her own story. Before I get into my review, I want to present this tendency of hers in pictorial form. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I would provide an illustration, or in this case, two.

This is how Courtney wrapped her Christmas present to me:

Are you seeing the problem? Bows. Ribbons. Curls. Flowers. The present inside was great, sure, but what was with all that stuff on the outside? I showed her how to really wrap presents with my gift to her:

I’m sure you can all see my point here: Courtney focuses on the uninteresting parts. But let’s get back to Proof by Seduction. Courtney gives us a hero, Gareth Carhart, the Marquess of Blakely, who she tells us has lived in the jungles of Brazil. Great. She has my attention. That’s cool!

But does Courtney give us any scenes to flesh out that adventure? No. Lord Blakely must have had to defend himself from jungle predators in Brazil, right? How did he do it? Did he shoot them? What kind of gun did he use? Who manufactured it? What did the after kick feel like? How many guns did he have? I want to read about that one time when Lord Blakely and his party were surprised one night as they sat around a campfire, listening to monkeys howling in the jungle blackness, by an an enormous jaguar who managed to drag away two of Blakely’s companions (to be eaten later) before coming back for Blakely, who had just managed to load his rifle and…

But instead, all we learn about the Brazil trip is… that it taught Lord Blakely how to make his own breakfast.

Memo to Courtney: Breakfast? If you want to write a really good book, write about the exciting stuff!

Courtney’s story telling ability when it comes to her heroine is no less frustrating. Jenny Keeble is the only character smart and resourceful enough to challenge Lord Blakely (who presumably doesn’t carry rifles in London, for some odd reason), and I have to admit that their (metaphorical) dueling reminded me (metaphorically) of the light saber battles between Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, or Luke Skywalker and the Emperor, or Yoda and the Emperor. Two skilled combatants, evenly matched, kicking each other’s butt.

So how did Jenny get to be such a bad ass? We’re told she was sent to a school when she was four and abandoned by her parents, and that she was a troublemaker. She pissed off the old schoolmarm so much that years later, the old crone wants to see her get what she deserves.

Wow! Jenny must have been a real cool dude in school. Courtney, show us scenes of her being bad ass! But alas. Does Courtney give us any examples of Jenny being a rolling terror in her school girl days? How about a scene where she’s throwing spit wads at the teacher when her back was turned? Or how about the time when Jenny learned to do a karate chop and she broke this other girl’s arm, and then she whirled around and did a groin-kick to this other prissy girl, while ducking under the teacher’s arms? Where are those scenes, huh? What a missed opportunity!

Courtney could have earned a whole extra Sherman Tank from me had she written about just one of Jenny Keeble’s schoolyard fights, preferably with blood and/or breaking bones.

To sum up: Proof by Seduction has a great hero and heroine, but Courtney doesn’t write enough about why they’re great.

Bottom Line: One and a half out of five Sherman Tanks.

Hello, I’m Mr. Milan. Yes, I’m a man, and as such, I don’t usually read romances.  My tastes run more to fantasy and sci-fi with the occasional Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy novel just to keep things fresh.  But Courtney asked me to write a brief review of her novella, “This Wicked Gift.”  No one has to ask me twice to give my opinion about something.

I will not allow the fact that Courtney makes me dinner to bias my review of her story. I’m not afraid to call it like I see it.  It’s like when Courtney attempts to play basketball.  If she sinks a three-point shot, I’m eager to shout “you go, girl!” and pat her on the bu–uh, on the back.  But if she fumbles the ball out of bounds because she bounced it off her own foot, despite the absence of any defensive pressure whatsoever, I’ll groan louder than anyone.  (Delicate considerations of marital peace prevent me from saying which event happens more often when Courtney plays basketball.)

You can trust me to give you the straight scoop about her story.  Which is that it sucked.

For one thing, there weren’t any good fight scenes. Swordfights?  None.  Gunplay?  Forget about it. Now, I like a good sex scene myself, don’t get me wrong.  But I prefer it when the sex is the denouement to a bloody barbarian invasion, or when the hero and heroine get a little jiggy with each other after they’ve just killed a monster with a six-inch kitchen knife and their own teeth.

For another thing, I know Courtney went to great lengths to make everything about the story fit with the historical setting of London in December of 1822.  The pences and shillings all add up, the way a lending library works is accurate, the neighborhoods are all realistic. But what was not realistic for any year in any city, was that a man would have sex with a woman and say anything other than, “Let’s do that again.”  When I told her this, she said something about “conflict” and “motivation.” I’m sure it would make sense to another woman.

There is some stuff to like about “This Wicked Gift.”  I don’t know if all romances are this way, but the dialogue was okay. My favorite part of the entire story, in fact, was the part near the end where the hero and heroine finally get around to discussing what the “Q” stands for in “William Q. White.”  It was something I’d been wondering about since the book started.  Quincy?  Quigley?  Quintillian?

And I have to say, I like the name William Q. White.  I may not be an expert, but don’t most romance authors give their heroes good metrosexual names like Adrian or Ethan or Derrick?  “William Q. White” sounds like something out of a documentary about the foreign policy of the Truman administration.

Unfortunately, a little sex and a lot of wit don’t make up for the lack of butcher knives or machine guns.

Bottom line: 2 out of 5 Sherman Tanks.

Um, thank you, Mr. Milan! I … appreciate that. Very much.