Customer Reviews

The Halo Effect

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dr. Morgan Snow, the protagonist of this first installment in M.J. Rose's new series of Butterfield Institute novels, is a perceptive therapist and a newly divorced mother, an expert in sexuality with, at least in recent years, more theoretical knowledge of the subject than hands-on experience. She is troubled still by an unusually sad childhood--details of which drip into the narrative of The Halo Effect--from which she emerged scarred with abandonment issues. Morgan is a fully realized, multi-dimensional, wholly likeable character. And she is an unlikely amateur sleuth, which is part of the charm of Rose's new series: criminal suspense has not found a home before in the halls of a sex therapy clinic.

Morgan, who has worked with the police in past cases, becomes involved again when a serial killer begins murdering prostitutes and posing them, in death, in a series of religiously significant, grotesque tableaux. Dr. Snow numbers many prostitutes--both incarcerated and not--among her patients, so the crimes are of especial concern for her. But what is most alarming is the recent disappearance of one of her favorites: call girl Cleo Thane has enjoyed an almost Mayflower-Madamish level of success but may have put her career and person in jeopardy by writing a tell-nearly-all book about her high-powered clients.

The Halo Effect is not your usual suspense novel. Not only is the occupation of its principal sleuth unconventional, but Rose's writing is somehow similarly unexpected. She eschews hackneyed expression while bathing her subjects in rich description. See, for example, her oblique description of the (sub-)eponymous Butterfield Institute: "There is a small brass plaque on the outside of the building, identifying it but giving little else away: The Butterfield Institute. The black cursive letters are etched deeply into the metal plate. Run your fingers over them and you feel the edges pushing into your flesh. Could you cut your skin on those edges and draw blood? Probably not, but even if you did, none of us inside could offer more than a Band-Aid."

As must be obvious by now, I liked Rose's book very much. And I am eager to read the second installment in the series, which will reportedly be released in April of 2005--farther off than I should like.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

I started this novel last night and finished it today. I could not put this book down. It is a very suspenseful novel and the ending will leave you breathless, I couldnt turn the pages fast enough to find out what happened!

The writing is very rich in detail, the book will have you holding your breath in places.

If you like books that make your heart race then this is one for you. I eagerly await the next Morgan Snow book due out in 2005.

MJ Rose is a stylist of the first order and in this new series, she has found her perfect material. Morgan Snow, sex therapist, takes us on a fascinating journey into the dark corners of male desire, where some of the world's wealthiest men pay to make their fantasies come true. This is the world of Cleo, the prostitute who Morgan is treating and comes to care deeply about. Both women are strong, intelligent, and utterly real. As in all Rose's fiction, the women are the central characters, and we admire them for their ability to think on their feet and even kick some *%* to get the job done.

I predict this book will be the beach read of the summer, but it's more than that. Rose can write and tell a story like nobody else out there. Try this book, see for yourself.

Psychologist and sex therapist Morgan Snow's favorite client is wealthy prostitute Cleo Thane who has recently sold a tell-all book. When Cleo vanishes and a serial killer begins dressing prostitutes as nuns and ritually murdering them, Morgan decides to investigate. Of course, she can't tell the police about the confidences Cleo shared with her in therapy, but she can use what she learned, what she knows about people, and what she discovers in Cleo's manuscript to help her.

Morgan goes undercover at the club which serves as a front for Cleo's prostitution ring. Pretending to be a temporary replacement for the missing Cleo, Morgan meets with Cleo's regular clients--the ones written up in her book and with the most to lose if their secrets are revealed. Could one of these wealthy and powerful men be behind the murders? Meanwhile, Morgan struggles with her own issues--a recently ended marriage, a daughter who seeks to follow Morgan's mother's career in acting--a career that destroyed her mother, and a too-sexy police officer who just might be using his attractiveness to get at secrets that Morgan must protect.

I could imagine the editors reading this book proposal and getting excited. Sex worker, check. Has to go undercover as a prostitute, check. Weird serial killer, check. Strong writing ability, check. It's all here, but for me, at least, it doesn't hang together as well as I had hoped. I had several problems with this book. First, the mystery is too obvious. That's not always bad because it can increase the suspense when the reader knows the killer and the protagonist doesnt, but in this case, it made Morgan seem stupid. Second, author M. J. Rose held back on the eroticism. Rather than combining the best of eroticism and suspense, THE HALO EFFECT comes a bit short on both counts.

M. J. Rose can string words together and create characters and a story. I'll look forward to getting my hands on more books by her. For me, though, this one fell a bit short of my hopes.

This is the first book I have read by M.J. Rose. I purchased this trilogy as a set. I am very pleased to say that after finishing "The Halo Effect" I am going to immediately begin the second book in the series. As the story unfolded, the book flowed quickly and I didn't want to stop reading. I loved the author's very detailed descriptions of her characters. Without giving away the ending I will just say that my pulse quickened. A great gripping thriller.

Series order
1. The Halo Effect
2. The Delilah Complex
3. The Venus Fix

This was a mostly enjoyable read, the first book in a thriller series, although M. J. Rose's voice is always problematic for me. In some books it grates so much that I have to stop reading, but I was able to get through this one.

The heroine/narrator spends an awful lot of time in early chapters explaining herself to the reader--and not all of it is relevant to the story. The heroine also does some rather stupid things which mostly seem to be more for the author's convenience in moving the plot along rather than a genuine outgrowth of her character and motivations. But the story starts cranking after awhile, and there's an interesting hook up between the heroine and another character. I wound up enjoying it enough to buy the next book in the series.

However, Ms. Rose clearly did not do sufficient forensic research on blood coagulation. Perhaps only a forensic nerd like myself would give a darn. If I could give this a 2.5 I would.

then this is the book for you. I read it in a couple of days even though I should have been working on office duties. Yes, there is some pretty vivid sex but it is really a part of the story and the suspense of what happens and why. I have ordered two more books by M. J. Rose and am excited about reading more of her work. I understand that some of the characters are in these follow-up books so I'm looking forward to see what happens to them. I began to have a hunch as to who the villain was about 3/4 of the way through,but couldn't be sure until the very last pages. If you like mystery, serial killer stories and interesting characters, read this book.

THE HALO EFFECT by M. J. Rose - Mira Books - 344 pps - [...]

When Cleo Thane, a Madame and high-priced call girl, suddenly disappears just as a serial killer starts killing off street walkers... and within days of giving a copy of her Heidi Fleiss-ish tell-all memoir to her sexual therapist, Dr Morgan Snow, those within and around her start a frantic memory search for clues or reasons.
Dr. Snow, a freshly divorced motherless mother of a 12 year old daughter, gives a first person narrative of her self-imposed mission to find, and hopefully save, her favorite patient. Is Cleo a victim of the Magdeline Murderer, dubbed thusly for his religiously inspired motif of killing? Has one of her well-to-do clients found out about the proposed book and decided his reputation was more important than Cleo's life? Or has she just walked away from her complicated life? Snow needs to know and goes against common sense to find out. Revolving around the manuscript, Snow, Cleo's two lovers, and an impassioned Detective use Cleo's all-to-obvious clues to find the men of the book to see if one of them could be responsible for her AWOL status.
While most of the story follows a clich? step-by-step mode of genre writing; the expected unexpected romance, the finding of one's own turmoil's while remedying another's, the yadda, yadda you already know what's going to happen next. And even though I figured out who the perp was 7 or so chapters before the good Dr. did, I found the book engaging, the characters easy to connect with and remained involved to the last page.
One in an ongoing series to take place at the Butterfield Institute, where Dr. Snow works, I'm actually going to look for the rest.

This is a truly wonderful book. Too often I cast suspense novels aside because I couldn't care less about the characters. Who cares about the psycho killer? Let him kill them all. I don't care! But not this book. This book is so well written with a heroine you deeply care about. M.J. Rose is wonderful writer who deserves to be a bestseller. I read this book in two days. If this exemplifies all the books in the Mira line, I'll be reading a lot more. I wish other suspense writers would take the cue. Plot is great, but without complex characters and good writing, who cares?

I love thrillers but it's sometimes hard to find ones that both read well and are original. This one did both. Rose's writing is flawless, the dialog realistic, the pacing perfect. Morgan Snow is a multi-dimensional heroine with strength and complexity, and setting the story against the backdrop of a sexual therapy clinic provides for plenty of sensual details. Loved!