Books to be Reviewed: Married Lovers by Jackie Collins

Thank you to Hayden Allen-Vercoe for sending me a copy of Married Lovers by Jackie Collins. Married Lovers is Jackie Collins's 25th "raunchy"novel.

"Cameron Paradise, a stunningly beautiful twenty-four-year-old personal trainer, flees her abusive boyfriend in Australia and ends up in L.A. Cameron soon gets a job at a private fitness club where she encounters the city's most important players. She has plans to open her own studio, and while every man she meets comes on to her, she is focused on working hard and saving money to achieve her goal. Until she meets Ryan Richards, that is. An extremely successful independent movie producer, he's married to overly privileged Mandy Richards, the daughter of Hamilton J. Heckerling, a Hollywood power-player son-of-a-bitch mogul. Ryan has never cheated on his demanding Hollywood Princess wife, but when he meets Cameron, all bets are off.

Only internationally bestselling author Jackie Collins knows what happens when lust and desire collide with marriage and power. And the results lead to murder. "

A review of Married Lovers will appear here soon and in the meantime those who are fans of Jackie Collins can buy Married Lovers from Amazon.com.

Book Review: Tracks by Mike Gordon

Tracks is a techno-thriller focussing on medical implants which allow the monitoring of patients health but also provide the means for a disturbing level of survellance; this is the first novel by Mike Gordon.

Tracks scores very highly from the beginning with an exciting introduction whereby a patient receives a phone call in the early hours informing him that he is about to have a heart attack; this beginning also introduces the reader to the problems surrounding this sort of monitoring. Whilst the plot is by no means easy to predict and contains a number of complexities, it is also laid out in a understandable and readable way. Where many similar novels get tangled up in lots of techno-jargon, the author here very skilfully avoids this and makes the reader concentrate on the plot rather than trying to impress with techno-speak.

The main character, Peter Miller, is an interesting one and a slightly unusual hero, being something of a geek with some problems engaging with other people. This, and other characters are well-formed enough to add another element to Tracks, but character development is not the primary goal of this novel - largely it is plot-driven and in this it succeeds in gripping the reader from page one until the end.

This novel is a fine effort from a first-time author and as a self-published book, it is remarkably good. Possibly the highest compliment I can pay Tracks and Mike Gordon is that the novel was one that I looked forward to picking up and continuing to read rather than one that was a chore to get to the end of.

Tracks is highly recommended to those who enjoy well thought out plots filled with controversial ideas. I would urge book lovers to buy this novel and support a self-publishing, new author in hope that he writes a second novel.

Score: 7.5/10