Review - Pain and Revenge

It’s generally not a good sign when you notice two factual errors within the first two pages of a book. Most readers might not have noticed them, but I did and it put me on guard for the rest of the story. Fortunately, I didn’t notice anything else, but it still probably impacted my impression of the book. For the record, your passport and visa gets checked by immigration, not customs, and if taking the train into London from Heathrow, you don’t leave the terminal building to get to the station, which is underground. You stay in the terminal and go down.

Now, on to the story: James Elliot is a spy for the CIA, coming to London for what is apparently his first assignment. His task is to ‘get close’ to a Russian agent and find out what he’s doing in London. The Russian, Gregor Malakoff, is gay and a big player in the BDSM scene, where he’s known as a brutal master. James is gay, although he’s surprised to find out the Agency knows that. Why he should be surprised is another one of those eyebrow-raising moments in the book.

James Elliot is obviously no James Bond. While he may be gay, he’s never been into BDSM, and he seems to have a very low pain threshold. You would think a spy would get some kind of training in that. He manages to make contact with Gregor quite easily and gets his first beating. James is home trying to recover from the meeting when Gregor barges in and effectively rapes him, leaving behind a bug in James’ flat when he goes.

As you can probably guess from the title, there’s a bit of revenge in store for Gregor. This is a very fast-paced book that doesn’t spend much time developing the characters or the scene. While international spying provides the plot, there’s none of the mystery and intrigue you would expect from a spy novel. It’s all very quickly wrapped up with an ending that’s definitely not happily ever after.

I had the same reaction to “Pain and Revenge” as I get from a lot of these short, under 40,000 word novellas these days: What’s there isn’t all that bad, but it could have been much better. The characters are barely one-dimensional and the plot seems to think it’s in a race to see how fast it can get to the conclusion. The sex scenes, which are short and brutal, didn’t do much for me, especially as James gets so little out of them.

The premise is somewhat unusual for a book with gay main characters, so I think the author could have done a lot more with the story. Maybe give James a little love interest on the side, like the bartender at the club who keeps coming on to him, or perhaps let James find out he’s a little bit of a pain slut. As it is, he’s rather wooden, and it’s hard to believe the lines he uses on Gregor work.

I’d give “Pain and Revenge” three of five stars. Despite the flaws, it’s fairly well written and not at all your typical gooey m/m romance that fills the e-shelves these days. The book can be purchased from Amazon or from All Romance ebooks.