Until earlier this year, I had never read Eric Jerome Dickey – I knew when he was here 2 years ago and chicks went insane to meet him, and oh, the awful jokes about his surname that even I was a main instigator of, even in up to September, in this News-Blog!
Then, my boss’ secretary sat me down at work during a lunch-break and made me read the first chapter of Genevieve (that is pronounced like the French JEANNE with a vee-uhve after it, go to his website and click at the books section, there is an audio guide from Eric himself on how you say the name for this particular character), and I was hooked and also sweating – LOL, that man can write some deep and seriously passionate sex scenes – I don’t know how Hollywood could possibly replicate that w/o going past NC-17!
{p. 308, 2nd para.} Lola didn’t talk while she fucked, just gave it as good as she got, moved like an ambitious woman who was still trying to learn how to get it right, and held me as we made our way around the bed, everything so fluid, changing positions more than a few times, ending up with her on top of me, rising and falling, eyes still tight, face cringing with pain and pleasure, then when she was about to come, she moved up and down, made skin slap skin so hard, did that like the devil inside her had been released, gasped and moaned a lot…
That was with Gideon – the (anti-)hero, when you discover the “true” villain – and he also has sex scenes, they were not as intense or as passionate as Gideon’s.
At a simplistic level – “Sleeping With Strangers” (published by Dutton Books and available at Cave Shepherd‘s Pages outlets) combines variations of themes; a James Bond archetype with the Oedipal angst of a Homeric saga, stretching a few days into what seemed like weeks – if you have lengthy nails, prepare for them to be gnawed while gripped in this two-part flambe of a gumbo!
Now for an expanded view… Reading these books was an EDUCATION! I learned how BC Powder in the American South is like Whizz or Phensic here in the Caribbean – the amount of fights that Gideon, our protagonist – a villain you can root for, gets into? He needs all the painkillers he can get!
Eric is not afraid to use the English language and make me discover previously uncharted vocabulary like esculent and juxtapose that word into an erotic context!
His grasp of geography is superb –
“The Opstapper. The weather is very nice so ride the Opstapper to see everything.”
“Bedankt“
“But the best way to see Amsterdam is from the canals. Look for St. Nicholas Boat Club.”I became patient, let the old woman finish telling me where to find the best shopping and where to find Mark Raven art, let her tell me all she wanted to tell me before I left her window.
I headed out into the heart of Amsterdam, a liberal city that had more weed-selling coffeehouses than Seattle had Starbucks…
…although I have never been to Amsterdam nor Montreal (which I learned is an island off of Quebec), his powers of description make me feel as though I was there just a while ago. When compared to Gideon’s travails in London, where I did visit briefly, I knew that Eric really understood London far more than myself! He also makes me want to go and see all of the places listed in “Sleeping With Strangers,” and for me this is one of the indicators of great novelist – to make you feel as though you’re travelling without moving.
Guns are a ready and easy part of the seamy lifestyle in “Sleeping With Strangers,” there are Sig Sauers & Desert Eagles apart from the usual .38 or .22 pistols. Guns don’t always have to be the method for a hit, there is a US-military transplant in Britain that Gideon must make an object lesson of… Snake-venom smeared inside a glass was the officer’s demise!
Technology is about CIA-level; Arizona (the girl Gideon loves but always seems to fall one inch short of attaining – the reason he became a contract killer was to earn a million dollars to take her away from the grifting lifestyle), a Filipina hybrid, she gets fake passports by using newborn-infants’ birth certificates, as that form of identity-theft takes longer to track!
Eric’s references from comic-books was marvelous, especially being an aficionado myself –
{p. 288, final para.} He swung hard, like Thor swinging his mighty Mjolnir, the hammer that destroyed all it touched. But he was hurting bad and the sledgehammer was heavy…
It seems that Gideon – who by no choice on his part – was a child of the streets from birth, but without his having a spiritual compass to assess his true worth, you realise he has a conscience but is forced to do dark deeds.
Conversely, the villain, whose identity will become apparent but that much I leave for you to guess, has no qualms for doing evil things yet while possessing the trappings of an urbane lifestyle is yearning for a centre to his soul.
This omission in the villain’s core is readily apparent, yet for Gideon he longs to be what he already has – an innate awareness of right and wrong! Most of his contracts he willingly selects are people who no one would miss – a rapper threatening fellatio by the infant daughter of another enemy hip-hopster; a British pedophile, a member of the US Army who threatened someone he still cares for deeply, among many others. Victims who are really perpetrators, or should I say perpe-TRAITORS?
It is this skewed sense of righteousness that leads him down a torturous path to track down an enemy called Thelma, a prostitute from his early past who performed many unforgivable crimes.
The James Bond-ness of Gideon can be witnessed in the guns and violence of the story – plus the sex, not just more than one woman in the same book, but the amount of times Gideon has sex would make most men either salute or be shamed!
Plot twists? Eric Jerome Dickey has more twists in the development of this story than there are dreadlocks on his scalp! He will have you guessing right to the last page… When next we hear about Gideon, he’ll be “Waking With Enemies“!
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