My Girl is BACK!

A life long fan of Amanda Quick, I will always be.  She is a brilliant writer with her own distinctive brand of wit and style that has truly set her apart from her contemporaries.  That being said, for a while now I've felt that her books, while retaining compelling story lines and equally compelling characters, have come up short in the passion department.  "Mistress" was the last time I felt the full power of her talent as a historical romance writer. Until now.  

To those first discovering Miss Quick, "The Perfect Poison" is a revelation.  For a long time fan such as myself, it is a welcome return to all of the elements a writer of her talent brings to her books.  It took me a day to read "The Perfect Poison" and I loved every line, page and chapter of it.  

Lucinda Bromley is a gifted psychical botanist with a strong talent for detecting poisons.  A fact, through a series of tragic events involving the death of her father and fiance by poison, that has garnered her the notorious moniker, Lucrezia Bromley by the London sensation press.  Caleb Jones is an impossibly complicated man whose own very powerful psychical abilities allow him to see the connective tissue in seemingly disconnected events.  He is, of course, considered highly eccentric and rumors of madness haunt him. 

Independent and fiercely private, they come together when Lucinda hires Caleb to investigate the disappearance of a rare fern she'd had in her conservatory.  Most recently traces of the fern were found on the body of a victim in the form of a deadly almost undetectable poison.

It just so happens the missing fern and Caleb's own private inquiries into the disappearance of a certain brilliant psychical scientist coincide.  Together Caleb and Lucinda burn in this electrifying journey and uncover the truth of their pasts in the search for...the perfect poison.

Delightful is a word I think best describes this book.  So delightful in fact that I've finally ventured into reading books under Quick's other pen name, Jayne Ann Krentz.  With dazzling foresight, Quick has bridged the gap between her historical romances and her contemporary romance fictions under the Arcane Society banner.  Events that take place in books under Quick ripple through time and generations of Jones's in to the future.  It took me long enough but, I'm hooked.

In her next installment, "The Burning Lamp", I look forward to immersing myself in Quick's unique and delicate balance of intrigue, wit and above all, passion.  Happy reading!