Customer Reviews

The Delilah Complex (MIRA)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr. Morgan Shaw is a sex therapist at the Butterfield Institute. In all her years of work no person or group has ever asked her to sign a confidentially agreement. Morgan is insulted that this one has, but decides to sign it in the end. This new patient is really a group of twelve women who are part of a secret club, The Scarlet Society. None of the women really know the identities of the others. The group invite selected men to share anonymous pleasures of the night with them. The men are willing participates and always subservient to the women.

The Scarlet Society is shaking from its very foundation due to the murder of a male member. The women need to know how to grieve for a man that they cannot even admit they knew. The number one is inked on the soles of his feet, so no one is totally surprised when the number two appears on the second victim.

All information and photos of the victims are sent to NY Times news reporter Betsy Young. It is only through Betsy's mail that the police ever realize that something is going on. The bodies of the victims are not being found. All the police have to go on are photos from the anonymous sender to Betsy and matching them to missing person reports. This is very frustrating for Detective Mark Perez and his partner Detective Noah Jordain.

Could it simply be coincidence that leads Noah to Morgan's office? After all, they've shared a brief, but powerful, connection in a previous case. One thing is for sure, Morgan is too close to the killer for comfort.

**** If you have had the pleasure of reading this author's first best selling novel "Lip Service", then you already know how well M.J. Rose writes. This author has a way of explaining human nature and making you feel that is all very natural, yet still leaves you feeling awkward and uncomfortable. THAT, my readers, is TALENT! This time Rose takes that same talent, then adds in some mystery and suspense. I see awards in the author's future again. Recommended reading. ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

I am working my way through M.J. Rose's trilogy. Book 2 "The Delilah Complex" was every bit as good as her first "The Halo Effect". This can be read as a stand alone but I would really recommend that the series be read in order. M.J. Rose writes a thrilling, fast moving story and the pace picks up even faster as the book climaxes. I like how her characters continue from one book to the next, but also like how she includes a bit of the back story in the subsequent book and does this without it seeming to be repetitively boring. Series order; The Halo Effect (MIRA), The Delilah Complex (MIRA), The Venus Fix: A Dr. Morgan Snow Novel (Butterfield Institute, Book 3).

The Delilah Complex, e-book edition by M. J. Rose is an interesting mix of mystery and quasi-erotica.
Dr. Morgan Snow is a sex therapist at the Butterfield Institute and is persuaded to undertake the therapy of a group of women who represent, and all are part of, a secret sex society. The society meets at various times for parties that allow them to treat men, who also are secret adjunctive members and in need of domination, in a subservient manner. Some of the men disappear sequentially and pictures of their nude bodies are sent to a newspaper reporter, who must, of course, inform the police. Eventually, the culprit is discovered after a series of twists in the plot.
The story centers around Morgan's activities on behalf of the society and her relationship with her daughter Dulci, a thirteen-year-old who shows acting ability, Noah Jordain, a detective with whom she is enamored, Nina, the Institute Director and mother figure for Morgan, who lost her mother tragically, and the various members of the society she is counseling. Morgan is carrying a large amount of psychological baggage, as are the other characters. This, plus the setting, allows dissemination of a large amount of psychological material to be interspersed in a plot that provides multidirectional clues. Delineation of the culprit provides an interesting climax.
Some readers may find the abundant presentation of supportive psychological material a little heavy at times. Additionally, I find some of Morgan's activity and ability a little suspect. However, the plot is interesting, the characters and their problems are relatively well portrayed, and the action is adequate to move the story at a pleasant pace. Reviewed by John H. Manhold, award winning fiction/non-fiction author.

I have enjoyed all of MJ Rose's novels, but The Delilah Complex represents a huge leap forward. It is psychologically astute, dramatically gripping, and erotically complex and convincing. It was very hard to put down, and I look forward to her new book eagerly.

I bought this one, based on the customer reviews, and amazon had sent me an email about Kindle deals ;-). The story is quite intriguing, and keeps you guessing till almost the end. However, since the main character is a sex therapist, you will be inundated with talk about feelings, emotions etc. For someone who reads tons of emotionless spy novels, it can get a bit heavy at times.
For an erotic thriller, it does not focus much on the mind,deviations or actions of the actual killer. There are obvious diversions, with the real culprit just popping up at the end. Quite good for a quick read, thats about it. You can read the other reviews for a synopsis.

M. J. Rose first caught my attention with the LIP SERVICE,
an erotic thriller . . . since then, I believe I've read everything else
by her and haven't been disappointed.

So when I saw her latest was out, THE DELLILAH COMPLEX, I made it
a point to read it as soon as I possibly could . . . and I must say that
this is still another addition to her list of smart, sexy tales that
I've enjoyed--and you will too.

THE DELILAH COMPLEX is the second in Rose bills as "a
Dr. Morgan Snow novel" (she first appeared in THE HALO
EFFECT) . . . this time, Snow is being brought to work with a group
of women who make up a secret group known as the Scarlet
Society . . . when bodies start disappearing, the members become
concerned and they turn to her for help . . . . yet what starts out
as counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation.

Though I read and very much enjoyed THE HALO OFFECT, I like
how Rose made it possible for you to enjoy her latest book
without having to have read the first book in the series . . . also, the
more I read this quick-moving book, the more I felt for the main
character and her teenage daughter . . . and I kept wanting
to find out what was going to happen next.

Rose writes extremely well . . . there were several memorable
passages; among them:

* I poured salt into the water. Supposedly salt makes the water boil faster
and the pasta taste better. I saw that once on an episode of MARTHA,
and anything I can do to make the food I cook taste better, I remember.
I seem to be missing the cooking gene; I can even ruin prepared food.

* We all lie. We learn when we are small children and see an overweight
woman in the pool and cry out--Mommy, look, there's a fat lady--and
our mothers tell us that isn't nice, that we shouldn't say things that
can hurt people's feelings. Because in some cases it's kinder to
lie, we are taught to ingest moral cyanide in the name of civility. And
then one ay we get to a point in our lives--perhaps the point that
Shelby Rush was at that moment--when the truth is the only way
we can begin to help and heal, but still we obfuscate and hide because
it is what we are used to doing.

* He listened intently, reading my face, my expressions--paying
attention to what I was saying and what I wasn't. That's what he did.
He listened to me. It was how he'd seduce me, by asking questions
no one had ever asked me: about how I felt listening to patients all
day long, about what it was like taking in all the pain and confusion
and processing it. And for a while, I had luxuriated in his questions.
Talked and talked. Frantically. Wildly. Like a butterfly that had
been caught in a net for hours and then suddenly let go.

I read the sypnosis on this book, it sounded thrilling. The story starts out with a bang and the story is very interesting. But- at the end it just flops. The criminal gets caught "the end." We're left with nothing as to what happens the rest of the women and the women's club, nothing mentioned as to why the "criminal" came to be disturbed. The story felt unfished. What a crock!

This book I couldn't put down. Ok, I had to. But I kept coming back to it before any of the others. I haven't read the first Morgan book, but you can be sure it is going to the top of my TBR pile. Morgan is contacted by a secret society to assist them with their issues - someone is killing off the men they invite to their events. Their events, by the way, usually involve domination and sex. Morgan struggles with the morality issues as well as the privacy issues once she, and the police, realize that the men that are being killed are connected. There are a lot of twists and turns is this mystery - once again the Cajun character has seduced me - but I thought it was great and I never suspected the ending.

Reminded me a little of Eyes Wide Shut, but the book's premise is interesting.
The setup is better than the ending, which is not impossible to guess.
Worth the $0 price when purchased.

"....the Devil don't change...you do"--one of my favorite quotes from the movie 8mm...I think that's pretty fitting of how the character of Dr. Morgan Snow is being developed in this series. But that's only one part of the story.

The main story of this novel centers around the Scarlet Society, an ultra secret sect of powerful and rich NYC women who attend meetings which is more or less a sex club. This club is different though in that the men that are there to service them are basically willing sex slaves. When a charter member of the male slave contingent goes missing and has pictures of his lifeless body sent to a reporter at the New York Times, the head of the NYC sex club gets in contact with Morgan Snow because of her involvement in the Magdelane Murder case from the previous year. They are not only upset about the men they knew intimately going missing but they're afraid for their lives as well.

At its heart this book is a sexually charged thriller. There are some twists and turns in there but I would be lying if I didn't say I knew who the criminal mastermind behind the whole plot was about half way through the book.

Some of the more graphic sexual imagery comes when the leader of the Scarlet Society sends Morgan a video tape of what the club is all about. I'm of two minds on this:

Mind 1) It almost seems as if Rose is trying really hard to get an erotic element in the book. Maybe that's my interpretation and it could be the wrong one mind you but that was my first impression.

Mind 2) going back to my quote from 8mm. I don't care how strong a person is but being a psychoanalyst, having to deal with the darkest depths of peoples minds has to take its toll on the professional. This is where I think the tapes from the Scarlet Society served their greatest purpose in the book: that of delving deeper into the character of Dr. Morgan Snow. As she watches these images of these powerful women debasing men and doing it willingly (something of a role reversal in the societal paradigms of men traditionally being in the role of power), Dr. Snow starts to reflect on her marriage and its breakup, her own sexual identity and the whirlwind of feelings she has for Noah Jordain. Hearing people's desires, fears, turn ons and turn offs for so many years has gotten to her. It's not only her mother issues that makes her have problems with relinquishing control and just letting herself go. It's the hubris that she felt her fulfilling yet vanilla sexual identity and sex life with her ex Mitch that starts to bother her not to mention that she has a problem keeping her patients torrid and disturbing stories out of her head in her own personal life. Very interesting stuff.

I will also say that the end, when we find out it was "Colonel Mustard in the study with the candlestick", that the final scene was so sexually charged that I almost found it a little ridiculous. I suppose in the confines of the book and what the main plot was that it, in a way, makes some kind of sense, but once again I go back to what I said earlier about the author trying to force an erotic/sexually charged atmosphere into the book.

In my review of the Halo effect I said something along the lines of the sex serving the story, not BEING the story, but it seems that this one takes a little step closer to trying to be a little too arousing and erotic. It really is a little step and a minor quibble but I think it's there. Once again, my own humble opinion!

I will say that once again it's well written and each character has their own distinct voice and it's a pretty entertaining novel for sure. Just a couple issues that kept it from getting a 5 star.