April 14, 2008
Berenice McFadden’s latest erotic melodrama written as Holliday (following Heat
) opens on Tony Landry’s taking a woman named Valerie back to his borrowed pad, with his lies coming on quicker than her sighs of pleasure. The novel’s focus, however, is ugly duckling Mildred Johnson, a lonely investment banking secretary living in a tiny Crown Heights, Brooklyn, studio. When handsome Tony, $60,000 in debt and looking for a big score, joins the company, she secretly falls for him; when he starts paying attention to her, she can scarcely believe her luck. Holliday, meanwhile, playfully lets readers in on Tony’s money laundering scam that depends on his seduction of Mildred, who is a caricature of innocence and suppressed longing. When she catches on, the novel morphs into a makeover-revenge fantasy, one that Holliday writes with barely suppressed glee. The more wild and outlandish things get, the more readers will smile.