Red Sage Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-160310-302-2
Sci-fi Romance, 2009
Agent Provocateur is set in 24th century Montreal, where we meet Jean-Sébastien Troy, our bad-ass undercover agent whose last job was a little too successful, with the resulting mounting collateral damage forcing his superiors to let him take the fall as the bad guy. We don’t want to embarrass the government, after all, do we? Troy, having served almost six years out of his 71-year sentence, is understandably not a happy man. Still, when a hot woman, Mercury, from the upper caste approaches him for assistance, he reluctantly accepts because he’ll get a full pardon if he gives her what she wants. All he has to do is to kidnap Brother Cain, the symbol of the revolutionary spirit that is rallying the lower caste folks to topple those in the upper caste.
Ooh, I think I’m in love with this story when Mercury and Troy start beating up each other the moment the person in charge is away. Ms Gray is one of those rare authors who can make such display of testosterone the sexiest kind of foreplay ever. Nothing is what it seems to be at first in this story, and I feel that some of the twists could use a little more development in order to give this story a little more oomph factor, but given that this is a short story, I probably can’t complain.
The romance isn’t the most believable one, but this story is very fast-paced and sexy, what with all that aggressive foreplay, heh. The setting is on the generic futuristic side, but the way the author introduces the twists have me thinking that I won’t mind seeing more of this world.
If you want a quick read that is sexy and action-paced with plenty of, er, aggressive foreplay, Agent Provocateur may just fit the bill. All these short stories by this author are making me really interested in a full-length futuristic thriller from her. When is that one coming out?
