Christine Feehan seems to have written forty to fifty books and until now I have thankfully never read a single one until I was sent Shadow Rider (2016. 448 pages).

To begin with the story is ok, well ok if you thought Fifty Shades of Grey was a good novel. The story of Mafioso Stefano Ferraro and his meeting with poor, down at heal Francesca Cappello, seems to be a poor excuse for Feehan to put the cause of feminism back a hundred and fifty years. The characters are weakly drawn, the plot is obvious and the relationships are shallow.

That sort of doe-eyed fragility might have had some semblance in truth for a nineteenth century novel, but unless you think that the world should be a Mills and Boon hallucination this sort of lazy characterisation should have no place in a mainstream novel. The same can be said for the endless descriptions of Stefano’s alpha male qualities.

Maybe I’m not the target audience, in fact I would say that was a given. I cannot see this appealing to any men or even many women, but I might be wrong maybe women still look for a Heathcliff, but with a dangerous edge, whose eyes not only smoulder, but have the ability to look straight through our heroine.

So, if you like to imagine yourself as an easily manipulated sex object, this might be right up your street.

5

Charles Packer