Three Nights of Sinby Anne Malloryreviewed by Valarie PelisseroMay 2008, 371 pages, Publisher: Avon, ISBN: 0061242410 Back Cover Blurb: When her brother was arrested for murder, the ton shut its doors to Marietta Winters. No one would help her save him from the gallows--no one but Gabriel Noble. In exchange for taking the case, Gabriel requests three favors from the desperate young beauty, and Marietta has no other choice but to make a deal with the sinfully handsome devil.
Searching for clues in the rough underbelly of London, Marietta must masquerade as a shamelessly wanton wench--much to Gabriel's delight. But Marietta swears to herself that her passionate moans are just for show. She could never fall in love with such a maddening, arrogant, seductive stranger...or could she?
Night after night, she satisfies his wicked cravings. But soon Gabriel wants more from Marietta than just three nights of sin--and even a sordid secret in his past won't prevent him from trying to possess her forever.
The Middlesex Murderer has been striking throughout London, three have already fallen victim to the killer and the people are clamoring for blood. Kenny Winters gets caught at the scene of the latest murder and his trial is being rushed through to satisfy the masses. Marietta Winters has already lost her parents, she is close to losing her older brother to his drinking, but she will not lose her baby brother.
A friend of a friend has told Marietta that, for a price, Gabriel Noble helps those in need, then in the same breath warns her to consider carefully before becoming indebted to a man like Gabriel. Seeing no other alternative, Marietta strikes a deal with Gabriel to clear Kenny's name, but no matter the outcome of the investigation Gabriel will still get paid his fee of either ten thousand pounds or three favors. As the investigation leads them in to danger and sparks even more mystery Marietta begins to wonder if the price is too high.
Sometimes the back cover blurb is right on about the story and sometimes it is completely inadequate, as is the case with Anne Mallory's latest book Three Nights of Sin. Yes, Marietta seeks out Gabriel's help to clear Kenny's name after he was arrested as the Middlesex Murderer. What the back cover blurb doesn't convey is how much more there is to the story. How Marietta and her brothers have struggled since the death of their parents two years earlier and how Mark's gambling isn't helping matters. How Gabriel is more than just a sinfully handsome devil that is forcing her to pay for his assistance with her virtue. How the characters of Marietta, Gabriel and even Kenny grow and evolve over the course of the story. This is a compelling, edgy book that gives us characters who are human, who are struggling to deal with their inner demons, and not always making the best decisions in the interim, but they are characters the reader can empathize with and relate to.
Rather than the mystery being a plot device to bring the hero and heroine together, here it is an integral part of the story, and it is not just the mystery of who the Middlesex murderer really is, it is the mystery of Gabriel Noble himself. Who is he? Where does he come from? How did he earn his reputation? Could he himself be the murderer? Almost the entire book is told from Marietta's point of view while Gabriel remains mysterious to the reader and to Marietta. Even though we get a little bit of personal information about him from time to time, it only serves to make him even more mysterious. He is a forceful character and has plenty of interactions with Marietta as well as with other characters in the book, but they are a means to an end for him, nothing more; there is never anything personal, even sex with Marietta is calculated and deliberately impersonal. Later in the book we discover that Gabriel was the victim of an amoral predator in his youth, which makes us question just what he knows about the murders. It was this victimization that led Gabriel to his vocation of helping those who need a different type of justice.
The suspense of the mystery never overshadows the romance between Marietta and Gabriel as can so often happen, nor did Marietta and Gabriel fall straight into bed. The book is titled Three Nights of Sin but that is not the price that Gabriel demanded of Marietta/ Instead, as the two work together to clear Kenny's name, gathering information in the seediest parts of London, they develop a mutual respect for one another which leads them to love. There are a lot of surprises within, most especially who the real villain is and who the real victim is, and this brief review cannot do justice to this book. Suffice to say that Three Nights of Sin is a wonderful read that was equal parts romance and suspense, creating a spellbinding book that was difficult to put down.
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