Jayne Ann Krentz's RUNNING HOT, a Romance-Suspense Novel,Changes One Opinion About Reading This Genre

I do not read romance novels. I do not read paranormal, woo woo novels. At least that’s what I repeatedly said until last week. Here’s what happened that led to the need for eating a serving of crow.

I scanned the new-book shelves at the library for familiar names. I found one, and then went the potluck route. I grabbed another one without looking at anything more than the type. Was it large enough for me to read?

My eyes are not getting worse. I don’t need Large Type books yet. It’s just that some publishers seem to view themselves as editors of classified sections of newspapers, and see nothing wrong with using a type size that is minimally legal and lined spaced at about half an en.

My first read was Alafair Burke’s ANGEL’S TIP. With the author’s move in real life from the DA’s office in Portland, Oregon, to teaching law at Hofstra Law School on Long Island, New York, she has introduced readers to NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher. As usual, it was a very enjoyable read from an A-list author. It’s a book I would highly recommend to those who enjoy the genre.

That led to Jayne Ann Krentz’s RUNNING HOT. I was still enjoying the after taste of ANGEL’S TIP, and this book appeared to be more of the same. By the time I had finished reading the first twelve pages, two things were obvious. I was hooked. This was a book I was going to read. But there was this other thing.

All the words were there, enough to stuff a large turkey should they have been breadcrumbs. They were no different than the ones a person reads in Business Week or Fortune about what makes highly successful business men what they are, and the edge they have, one that some try to enhance by doing a few drugs.

It was not until that twelfth page that the realization came that all those “auras” and “pulses of dark energy” radiating during an argument between a boss and his assistant after arriving at an island getaway were not Madison Avenue buzzwords. They were not literary hype.

When the boss attempts to attack the assistant, she grabs his wrists. She radiates jolts of energy. Her boss convulses, stumbles, and falls off the boat dock. Dead. The hands of the assistant are burned. She killed her boss simply by grabbing his wrists. Prime grade woo woo!

That realization drove me to Jayne Ann Krentz’s Web site. That’s where I discovered that I was totally hooked on a “contemporary romantic-suspense” novel. She writes these under her married name. She writes historical romantic-suspense under the name of Amanda Quick. She uses her maiden name, Jayne Castle, for what is described as “futuristic/paranormal romantic-suspense.”

When I looked at her Web site, and saw how many books she had written under various names, I took another look at the author’s photograph on the back of the book. In it, she looks too young to have written so many books. Digging a bit deeper on another Web site, I found part of the secret for this former librarian’s success is that “she is famous for her work ethic, beginning her writing by 7 am six days a week.”

RUNING HOT has a plot built around an organization called the Arcane Society. It is far more plausible than many of the grand conspiracy plots that seem to inhabit many of today’s best-selling books that are peddled under the suspense label. The paranormal aspects, the reading and battles of auras, are icing on the cake.

And what about the “romance” parts? Well, they are better written⎯and no more explicit⎯than what’s found in many of today’s “mystery” novels when the plot leads a man and a woman to an encounter between the covers of the book.

So, The Old Cobbler will eat his crow in whatever manner it is ultimately deemed that it should be devoured. And I will probably be looking for more books in the Arcane Society series. There are at least five more to be read.