Book Review: GENTLE PIRATE by Jayne Castle (1980)

GENTLE PIRATE by Jayne Castle was either Jayne Ann Krentz's first published novel (as she said in a 2004 interview) or at least one of her earliest novels.  It was the second book in Dell's Candlelight Ecstasy line, published in Dec. 1980, which introduced a higher level of sensuality (i.e., sex) than was common in category romance titles at the time (and which led to the competition following suit).  My copy is a reprint edition from August 1986, released as part of the Candlelight Ecstasy Classic line, which has a different cover from the original.  A scan of the front cover of my copy is shown at left.

     It's a thin book, only 187 pages, but jam-packed with drama, memorable details (like the heroine's penchant for the color yellow) and touches of humor, with nary a dull moment.  It's a very well-written book, but at times a highly infuriating one.

     The hero (if we can call him that) of the book is the "pirate" of the book's title, a former soldier named Simon Kendrick who rarely seems to be all that "gentle" in his manner.  In an unusual touch for a contemporary romance novel, Simon is missing a hand, and instead uses a removable steel hook.  Presumably Krentz added this element to give this modern-day story some of the attraction and danger that was associated with historical romance novels of the time, where the heroine might be kidnapped by a pirate (with whom she would eventually fall in love).  In her later writings about the genre, Krentz has emphasized that the modern romance novel uses classic archetypes that hold universal appeal, and the pirate (like the devil or the vampire) would be such an iconic figure possessing a dark allure.  

     The heroine of the story is Kirsten Mallory, who is working as a reference librarian in a company called Silco based in Richland, Washington.  Simon has been hired to "trim some of the fat from the organization," and Kirsten suspects that her job may be one of the things Simon decides to trim.  Kirsten is 27, but already a widow, having previously been married to an ex-Marine named Jim Talbot.  She left him when Jim beat her, and later he was killed in a car accident.  She has been dating a coworker named Ben, who "was a man a woman never need to fear" due to his kind manners.  And yet, Kirsten finds the easygoing Ben to be too soft for her taste, and wishes she was able to find a man in "the middle" -- not as soft as Ben, but not as rough as Jim.  

     Simon doesn't fit the bill, it appears, because of his forceful manner, inserting himself into her private life (beginning with intruding on her date with Ben) and inviting himself into her apartment to stay the night after she discovers the place has been ransacked in her absence.  Throughout the novel, Simon continues to give orders to Kirsten about what she can or can't do, expecting his demands to be obeyed, and uses his large physical size to push her around when she resists his commands.  His familiarity eventually culminates in his demand that they be married, even though they have only known each other for a week.  

     I was reminded of an Anne Stuart novel that I read a couple years ago, Chain of Love (from 1983), that also had a large arrogant 'hero' who ordered the heroine around so much that a few times I was hoping she'd pull out a gun and shoot the jerk.  In my review of that book, I had written: "As I got to the last few chapters, I wondered how that obligatory happy resolution would come about since it seemed like if the two went their separate ways then nothing worthwhile was achieved, but if [she] submitted to [him] then she would be stuck in another potentially abusive relationship."  I felt the same way here -- although I do have to say that Gentle Pirate is the better book due to how entertainingly it is written, despite the outrage I felt toward Simon's sense of entitlement in his treatment of Kirsten.

     When I had gotten to page 84 of the novel, I decided to see if I could predict how the plot would be resolved.  Here's what I wrote to myself at that point: "It seems to me that the only way that the jerk 'hero' Simon can be satisfyingly redeemed is if he has been putting up a fake front of arrogance this entire time in order to protect the heroine.  For example, if it turns out that Simon has secretly been assigned (perhaps by the government) to expose corruption in the company they work for, and that is why he is warning Kirsten away from going on a date with Roger Townsend, if Roger is actually the object of Simon's investigation.  Or perhaps Simon is really Phil Hagood, the friend of Kirsten's late husband Jim Talbot, and so that is why Simon wanted to obtain the package that had been mailed to her.  Or Hagood could be the person who trashed Kirsten's apartment, looking for the contents of the package.  Perhaps the reason that Simon insisted on sleeping overnight in her apartment after it was trashed is because Simon believed her to be in danger and wanted to protect her.  And that would also explain why Simon insists on moving into her apartment complex, so that he can be able to be nearby in case she is in danger.  I think this would be the only way that Simon's horrible behavior could be excused and that it would make the reader want Kirsten to end up with him romantically." 

     Well, yes and no.  I won't spoil the plot here, but Simon was not assigned to protect Kirsten, is not really Phil Hagood (who we meet later), and is not putting up a fake front.  He's just as arrogant at the end of the novel as he was as the beginning, perhaps even moreso.  However, he is trying to protect Kirsten, which does explain why he wants her to stay with him.  No, Simon simply wants Kirsten for himself and isn't going to take no for an answer.  In real life, if someone who had control over another's employment (as Simon does when it comes to Kirsten's job) and did a fraction of the things to her that Simon does in this novel, it would be a clear-cut case of harassment.  In real life, Kirsten ought to have a restraining order against him.  

     Since this is an old-school romance novel from 1980, however, Kirsten's mind may be saying no, but her body is saying yes, and that reflects her true feelings for him, not any denials that she might make with her mouth.  The reader may be objecting to Simon's actions, but Krentz provides the occasional suggestion that Kirsten is really fine with it -- and who are we to argue with the heroine, right?  For example, on page 97, we read: "She wanted to tell him now that he had no business acting as if she was a schoolgirl who had overstayed her curfew but couldn't work up the courage to confront him. She sneaked a glance at his hard profile and swallowed her words. But nowhere in all the discomfort she felt was there any sensation of genuine fear such as she had known with Jim Talbot."  This is intended to signal to the reader that Simon may be rough around the edges, but is not abusive, not like Jim.  And yet, Jim didn't abuse Kirsten until after they were married, so this observation is hardly reassuring.

     I'm the kind of person that dislikes the idea that a book -- mere words on a page -- can be deemed "harmful" -- as if adult readers need to be protected like children from bad ideas.  But by the time I got to page 170, with no "grovel" from the hero in sight as he takes Kirsten, an abuse survivor, over his knee and gives her a spanking for disobeying him, I was disgusted and alarmed by the message that Krentz's words were sending to her readers: that this is okay, that this man is a hero, that he is in the right and that this is somehow true love.  It's not.  Perhaps some readers may find it romantic when Simon says, on page 176, "Don't you know that the reason I must have you is because you are the other half of myself?"  But a closer reading of that question reveals that his "love" for her is all about himself.  On page 180, Kirsten asserts her expectation of equality in their relationship: "I consider you as much my property as you consider me yours!"  And yet, just prior to the spanking, on page 170, Simon tells her: "I want you to understand, sweetheart, that what I am about to do is not simply for your own good, nor is it merely a means of letting you know who will be the ranking partner in our marriage."  In other words, he holds the power, not she.

     Certainly most readers (one hopes) would never tolerate such patronizing behavior from their own husbands (or, in this case, an unmarried man they met a week ago), but perhaps some impressionable readers would conclude that this is how women ought to be treated by men, and that's an insidious message to receive.  It's frustrating to see such a well-written book -- in some ways a modern (for 1980), funny, clever, entertaining book -- used to promote such a reactionary view.  It's hard to understand that indeed a woman wrote this book, after the societal change achieved by the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970s, and that other women ate it up.  Sure, it's fiction, it's a fantasy, but it's also infuriating, and just the kind of book that a feminist reader would likely fling across the room in disgust.

     And when I had finished the book, I felt that Krentz had a lot of gall to subsequently be on the forefront of defending the romance novel genre from its critics, when Gentle Pirate is such an obvious example of what was wrong and unenlightened about the genre at the time.  Its values are deranged, and there's really no convincing defense of it, at least from a moral point of view.  I'm rating it 3 (out of 5) stars, although it would have rated higher had the hero been likable, or at least made to grovel or change his behavior at the end.  There was plenty for me to like about this book (including a mention of Nick Carter [Killmaster] near the end!) but a lot to dislike about its outdated view of real love.  

Book Review: SPY by Danielle Steel (2019)

My copy of SPY by Danielle Steel is the mass-market paperback edition published by Dell in October 2020. (The hardcover came out the year before.)  The image shown at left is a scan of the front cover of my own copy.  

     The novel tells the life story of an Englishwoman named Alexandra Wickham (called "Alex" throughout the novel) from age 18 (in 1934) to age 84.  The first part of the book (up to page 158) deals with her experience as a spy during World War Two for a secret organization called SOE (Special Operations Executive).  During the war she meets and falls in love with a young pilot named Richard, but she is not allowed to let him know (for the next 20 years) that she is a spy for the government.  After the war, SOE is disbanded.  Alex and Richard marry, and he becomes a diplomat assigned to live in foreign countries for around four years per country -- first to India, later Pakistan, then Hong Kong, Moscow, and finally (during the LBJ years) as the British ambassador in Washington, D.C.  Alex accompanies him in all of these countries, sharing his sense of adventure during their travels.  Historical events of the time are depicted, but in a somewhat superficial or simplistic way (e.g., "Nehru spoke to her of the end of British rule, and the importance of independence for India.") 

     MI6 had asked Alex to secretly report to them all of her activities during her stays in these countries (who she met, what they said), without telling her husband.  This middle part of the book (pages 167-314) is less interesting when it comes to action and intrigue than the first part was, since it doesn't involve much in the way of espionage.  (In fact, it seemed to me that some of the stuff she was reporting back to MI6 would have already been known by reading the newspapers of the time.)  Only a few times during the foreign-diplomat years is there a sense of danger about her spying activities, but those concerns are quickly over with before anything bad can happen.  (In fact, Alex seemed to be in more danger giving birth to her children, during this part of the book.)  

     The final two chapters of the novel (pages 320-347) cover the twilight years of their lives in a rapid (perhaps too rapid) fashion.  For example, on page 304, we are told that Alex is 50 years old, and Richard is 58.  On page 327, Alex is now 74, Richard is 82.  By page 328, Richard is 90 years old, and 91 years old on the next page.  On page 330, Alex is 83, and by page 341, she is 84.  Those sudden jumps in their ages were a bit disorienting, even a little disturbing. There's a bittersweet feeling to the quick passage of the years, as Alex and Richard grow old, and their daughter becomes an adult and has children of her own, and they in turn become adults and get married.  There's a nice line near the end where a character says about their children, "They are who they are, in spite of us, not because of us" (page 342). As the years pass, some things have a parallel in previous events, such as when Alex's daughter leaves her parents to live in another country, just as Alex had done to her own mother by being an ambassador's wife.  Another irony I noticed is during her time in Moscow, the American ambassador warns them of the KGB bugging the premises, saying "It's an entire nation of people taught to spy and report on each other. It's quite sad really," (page 291), when this is in fact what Alex has herself been doing for MI6 the past several chapters.

     Although this is the first book by Danielle Steel that I've ever read, I had read the opening pages of a few of her other novels before, and was turned off by the info-dump style of her writing.  It reminded me of the time I took a Creative Writing class where we were encouraged to get to know our characters before writing about them and were instructed to write what clothes would be in their closet, what was their routine in the morning, what was their family history, and so forth.  None of that material was intended to appear in the finished story, but was rather intended to help crystalize who these characters were in the writer's mind.  It almost looked to me like Steel's info-dump writing was the result of actually using all of that irrelevant background material in the finished product -- material that the reader didn't need to know.  So, her writing looked like it would be a bit of a chore to plow through.

     However, I sometimes think that one may be more receptive to a work based on one's mindset, and that if I could simply accept that this was Steel's unique style, that I might be able to enjoy it more.  Also, I think a reader's attitude towards a book may be influenced in comparison to the last book they read -- which, for me, was a thin YA novel written in a very simple style that had a lot of repetition of sentences for emphasis.  Going from that slim book to this Steel novel made for a more welcome transition than if I had just finished reading an exciting, cleverly-written book and then started reading this one.  So, perhaps my expectations were lower when I started reading Spy, and therefore was less annoyed by the writing style than I otherwise would have been.

     There's no getting around the fact that Steel's writing sometimes sounds more like a Wikipedia summary of the novel's plot than the novel itself.  There are several instances where a dramatic event occurs, but Steel for some reason fails to dramatize it.  An example that stands out for me is on page 149, when Alex is behind enemy lines, waiting for a plane to rescue her.  But the plane is shot down, killing the pilots aboard, and Alex has to flee into the night to avoid capture.  Here is how Steel depicts that dramatic scene, in its entirety:

     "She went to the meeting place for the plane that was due to pick her up. She was precisely on time, and heard the engines purring in the distance, and when the plane got close enough to land, an anti-aircraft gun behind her ripped through it, the plane crashed, and the pilot and gunner were killed. She disappeared into the brush and headed for some distant hills before going back to her contact."

     I know that they say one shouldn't review a book that the writer didn't write, but to me the failure of Steel to effectively dramatize such a scene is a clearly missed opportunity, and demonstrates the shortcomings of her prose.  Another writer might have taken several pages to depict that horrific event -- heck, they might have even used it to open the novel, to suck the reader in -- but Steel reduces it to the level of a basic plot summary.  The lack of dramatization makes the writing look at times like a laundry list of events -- this happened, then this happened, and then this happened -- without presenting a reason why the reader should care about any of the things that are happening.  As I was reading Spy -- and enjoying it for the most part, I must admit, because I liked the main character Alex and the 1940s time period that much of the book takes place in -- I wondered where the story was going.  What was the point of all this?  The arc of the plot -- the point of the story -- doesn't become apparent until the very end, when one of Alex's granddaughters ends up following in her footsteps as a spy.  "A-ha!" I thought.  That is why any of this matters: so we can see that her espionage career inspires her granddaughter.  I wish there had been a hint of that prior to page 341, though, so that I'd have a better understanding of where the story was going, what its purpose was.  Because for long stretches there in the last half of the book I was wondering what the point was, why this story was being told. 

     I also wondered if any of the characters that Alex had encountered as a spy behind enemy lines during World War Two would show up again after the war, or if their fates would be revealed.  Perhaps someone would recognize her from her wartime spying, putting her in jeopardy of being exposed later, after the war?  But nope, that doesn't happen.  Those earlier events might have seemed more meaningful to the reader if they were brought back into the storyline later on.  In other words, if they were shown to have mattered.  So, that was another missed opportunity on Steel's part to make the story more engaging.  

     Another problem with Steel's writing style is how repetitive it can be.  For example, on page 177, Steel informs the reader that "From now on, MI5 would be overseeing any intelligence missions domestically, and MI6 would handle anything international."  Ten pages later, on page 187, Steel has a character explain: "MI5 keeps track of national security domestically, and MI6 is the foreign branch."  When it comes to how much Alex is paid to be a spy, we are informed four times (by my count) that the pay is intentionally low in order not to attract attention (see pages 40, 116, 190 and 316).  

     The back of this paperback edition (pages 353-382) contains the first chapter of another Steel novel, All That Glitters, which suffers from some of the same problems. Steel informs the reader on page 359 that "Sam was a year older than Coco," even though Steel already told us on the previous page that "he was a year older and a grade above her."  Did she think we forgot?  Anyway, the first chapter of that book begins with a massive info-dump, again making me wonder why I should care about any of these people and their family histories, until Steel finally brings some drama to the story by having Coco's parents killed in a terrorist attack in Paris.  I do wonder from this preview how Sam and Coco's story turns out, but perhaps not enough to have to wade through 300+ pages of info-dumping text.

     Although the review above may sound harsh, I'm still rating Spy 3 (out of 5) stars.  It was a quick read for me, despite the plot-summary prose style, and I enjoyed reading it more than I thought I would.  (Admittedly my expectations weren't high, however.)