Review: The Venus Fix

This is the third book in the Morgan Snow erotic thriller series and [although a riveting read] has a serious message rippled thorough the narrative.

For those who have yet to discover the talents of M.J. Rose let me re-cap. These thrillers feature NY sex-therapist Dr Morgan Snow, who while bringing up her star-struck daughter Dulcie [following her divorce] tackles cases linked to her practise at the Butterfield Institute. Aiding her is Noah Jordain a detective from the NYPD and her own love interest. The interactions with her daughter Dulcie provide warmth from the dark chills in Snow’s professional life. Snow is concerned that her daughter is following her own mother’s life [Dulcie’s grandmother] far too closely, as she killed herself on booze and a string of unsuitable men, when her career stalled when she hit it big as a young actress and found it difficult to cope when the starring roles dried up. She fears that a similar fate could befall Dulcie.

This time around Snow is faced with a case entailing treating a man who calls himself ‘Bob’ and frequents internet webcam sites which feature women doing sexual services online. The problem is that ‘Bob’ can’t control his urges to view the sordid material that lies on top of the damp floor of the internet, and is finding it hard to hold his own relationship in check. Snow’s lover Jordain becomes involved when one of these web-cam women appears to die online, first vomiting, and then convulsing and finally lying still. It seems someone murdered her online in a most unpleasant and sordid manner.

Snow is also involved with a group of high school students who appear addicted to Internet pornography, so-much-so that they are drifting away from the reality of ‘normal’ male-female relationships, looking instead for the quick fix that these internet sirens provide and expecting their girl-friends to act like the ones on their PC screens.

Meanwhile Snow’s patient ‘Bob’ comes under suspicion of the murder of the women who died on-screen, but Snow is not convinced that ‘Bob’ is capable of such an act, especially as it was so calculated. Add to this that one of the in-training sex-therapists at the Butterfield Institute was a former web-cam performer – and you have the plot of a page-ripping thriller. What propels this thriller above the average is Rose’s characterisation of Snow and how she deals with her daughter and Detective Jordain while all the while enmeshed in a murder investigation. The real kicker for this male reviewer was having a look face-on of what the Internet porno industry is having on relationships in both the sexually immature [the high school kids] as well as the middle-aged. In this IPOD world where conventional TV is being overtaken by YouTube, and gratification is now measured in minutes and sex relegated to a solitary experience in front of PC- Screen; The Venus Fix does raise some disturbing questions, for which the answers maybe close to impossible to fix; where technology is evolving faster than human emotion. This is a tough book asking tough questions, but as a thriller, this is second to none, but don’t ship this to your mother just yet. For those who like challenge in their thrillers; this is a great fix.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Ali Karim - RAM

Book Review: The Venus Fix