cover image The Spy Who Wants Me

The Spy Who Wants Me

Lucy Monroe, . . Kensington/Brava, $14 (314pp) ISBN 978-0-7582-2915-1

Monroe's absurd latest features studly chemist Beau Ruston and sexy spy Elle Gray. When security is compromised in Ruston's lab, the government sends in Gray with cover as a security consultant. While both are instantly attracted to each other, Gray must conceal her true identity, and Ruston must conceal that he already knows it. The layers of deception are compounded when Elle discovers that her brother, Matej, is working at the laboratory as well. When smugglers bent on stealing an antigravity prototype start threatening Matej's girlfriend, Gray makes it personal. There's nothing that hasn't been done better elsewhere; the characters are woefully caricatured types; the sex scenes are dreadful (“But her vaginal walls were spasming with desire”) and the plot has a distant, nodding acquaintance with reality. (Jan.)