Sexy Spies + Overwrought Plot = Not-so Sexy Spies

I’m a bit of a self-loathing historical romance reader. Some (Flowers From the Storm, The Grand Sophy, Outlander, Lord of Scoundrels) are really great but the vast majority can best be described as disappointing. In fact if you use Mrs. Julien’s infamous tally (and really, why wouldn’t you) as a guidepost, a meager 10 out of 75 historical romance novels read in 2014 warrant her coveted recommendation. Many of the characters and plotlines are relatively homogeneous because there are only so many variants of “wealthy unwed duke” and “charming rake in need of redemption” that authors can come up with. Thus many books fade into a blur of “meh.”

A few years ago I stumbled across Joanna Bourne (The Forbidden Rose, The Black Hawk, The Spymasters Lady) and was thrilled by her original approach to the genre, where the characters are British/French spies in the post-revolution period where everybody has a murky past, hidden lethal talents, and the end-game isn’t marriage but surviving the latest mission. She’s great at weaving sexual tension into a story with rich historical details and lots of fun cloak and dagger elements.

So I snapped up her latest book, Rogue Spy. The rogue spy is Thomas Paxton (Pax to his friends), member of the British Intelligence Service. 10 years ago Pax was in a French cache (I can’t figure out if these actually existed or are entirely a figment of Bourne’s imagination but a cache is essentially the an amazing spy school except for the starvation and beatings) along with Verite (now Camille Leyland) who has been thrust from her comfortable hiding place due to threats from a powerful blackmailer.

There’s a lot of overly-involved plot here but as with most romance novels, the plot is largely irrelevant as long as the hero/heroine crackle together. And Pax and Verite do have quite a bit of crackle. But they would need a huge conflagration to balance out the weight of this story. Because boy is there a lot of weight.

If you measured the quality of a story based on the number of plot threads, this would be a 5-star book. Blackmail, kidnapping, lost heiress of an Italian crime family, spy codes, hidden identities, evil parents, plots to blow up London.

There are a ton of characters in this story, the fluffy Aunts, the British Spymasters Pax works for, the entire Baldoni clan, the Merchant. All are of different ages and nationalities but every character in the book shares one common trait: they’re all amazingly smart and masterful at the spy game.

Pax and Verity have “instalove” (just add water!) but none of the barriers to their HEA run very deep so not for a second do you worry or wonder how they’ll manage to actually get it together. Of course they do but the big sexual encounter is one of the least lively I’ve ever read. They’re incredibly attracted to each other but not so much as to not enjoy a lengthly conversation while they sit there in a state of undress. There’s also the fact that Pax is a virgin (why? who knows) but it’s little more than a toss-off line and not really a factor in their encounter (a missed opportunity I think).

The villain of the story, The Merchant, is built up to be a criminal mastermind of the highest order which makes his penultimate plan almost laughably silly. The Scooby Gang could have outwitted this guy.

Joanna Bourne is a talented author who brings rich historical details and clever phrasing to her writing. But Rogue Spy didn’t work for me. If historical romance with spies sounds fun, ignore the terrible cover art and check out The Black Hawk instead.