Soft Case Crime ( )

Hard Case Crime doesn't publish many books by women and perhaps there is a dearth of women writers in the hardboiled field. Even so, Hard Case has found a couple of topnotch female writers who offer a slightly different perspective to the writing.

The Secret Lives of Married Women appears to be quite salacious and provocative from both the lurid cover and the title. One would think that it is more about sexual affairs than it is. It is an unusual book for Hard Case to publish. It neither involves a hardboiled detective nor a bumbling criminal on the run from the mob, the police, his inlaws, or foreign mercenaries. It is the story of two sisters, Leda and Lily. One is a housewife, creeped out by Jack the Handyman, who has an inability to share with her husband aspects of her racy past that she wishes no one knew about anymore. The second portion of the book focuses on the other sister, the one who did not have a racy past, went to law school, married her best friend from law school, and has a somewhat boring love life with him. The focus of this portion of the book is this sister's fascination with sadomasochism. It does contain elements of courtroom drama, blackmail, and sexual experimentation, but those elements are not overwhelming in the story and the true story focuses on the sisters' emotions. It is a well written book and reads quickly, but it is, as mentioned earlier, outside the crime fiction world.
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Twin sisters, a high-powered New York lawyer and a former actress whose quick marriage to a Russian emigre younger than herself has taken her across the country, navigate the complexities of erotic power and desire within (and outside of) marriage. Both derive pleasure from risky situations—explicit submissiveness in one case, the fear of what she doesn’t know about her husband in the other—that relight the sparks of attraction for them. While I thought the book had some sharp observations to make about power, marriage, and some kinds of lust, I didn’t feel the frisson that the characters felt, though others might. (The former actress once starred in soft porn; a creepy guy takes that as extra license to harass her, but it is very clear that he is entirely in the wrong. The book portrays desire under patriarchy but basically seemed nonjudgmental of women’s desires, though individual characters are judgmental, including of themselves.) ( )