WARNING!!! Believe the words on the cover. This novel has an overload of SEX and VIOLENCE.Any man on a business trip who has thought about how cool it would be to go to bar and pick up a woman should read this book. Glenn Close move over, Katherine Ann Tolliver has become the new definition of Fatal Attraction.
Katherine likes men. She likes them a lot. Men find her irresistible and she makes it...oh...so...easy for them. She gets excited about the prospect of having sex with them. She gets even more excited about the prospect of killing them. She discovered that men will always drink the liquid refreshment(laced with a dose of tranquility) that a beautiful woman gives them especially after a frisky bout of sex. As they drift off in the arms of Morpheus she ties them up. She can then without fear of losing control, do what she wants to them, including sliding a knife up under their ribcage as a final act.
"No question, right from the very first time she liked to kill. It really got her motor going. The sex was a whole lot hotter when she knew she was going to kill the guy, and the money was more gratifying when she could think of it as a sort of bounty that was hers for the taking."
There were times for various reasons that men got away. These escapees continued to bother her as she became more and more proficient at her task. She decided she needed to "regrow her psychic hymen by killing every man who ever had sex with her." She starts making a real effort to track those men down and mark them off her list. She criss-crosses the country living off the money from dead men's wallets, changing her name as frequently as she changes her clothes. The police are always in the background, but never a real threat to her. She is careful and never stays around long enough for anyone to remember anything about her beyond a fake name and a pretty face. She is attached to nothing and that allows her to move quickly and easily around the country. She is a law enforcement nightmare, a suspect with no motive.
The book is a bit unseemly with an overdose of sex on nearly every other page; necrophilia makes an unsavory appearance, and finally not to be forgotten a loving(pedophilia)father who played such a critical part in making Katherine a killer. The violence, despite a high body count, is surprisingly muted. The book does fit the profile of a hard boiled book, but is not a mystery or detective book. Overall, through cringes, and bouts of uneasiness I did decide that the book deserves 3.5 stars.