How is character revealed in fiction? In two main ways: through action, and through relationships. Both methods are beautifully illustrated in the person of Veronica Day, the first-person narrator and protagonist of N. Heinz’s Deadly Persuasion. As the novella opens, Veronica is deep in numbed grief over the year-ago death of her older sister Tiffany. But more than that, as the nineteen-year-old scion of a wealthy, emotionally frigid family, Veronica is adrift, with no idea of who she really is or what she is meant to do with her life.
Enter the classic bad boy Devlin Monroe, son of a violent drug kingpin who is frequently sent out to do Dad’s wet work. He awakens Veronica emotionally and sexually, vying for her affections with Brand Peters, the smooth blonde governor’s son favored as a suitor by Veronica’s social-climbing grandmother (Veronica’s vicious parents having virtually taken themselves out of the picture). Thanks to the rivalry for her affections between the hit man and the politician’s progeny, Veronica comes back to life and discovers that she is not at all the “nice girl,” the socially conformist, meek female her grandmother desires to mold her into, but a young woman with a penchant for violence and sex, the two tastes not being entirely separate.
It is here that I should mention that Deadly Persuasion sits, not completely comfortably, on the boundary between three genres, thriller, horror, and erotica, though if forced to pigeonhole it I would probably name the first category. The erotic aspect is interesting. Erotica as such doesn’t usually do much for me, since in my view there are only so many different ways of saying, “Insert Tab A into Slot B,” and they aren’t usually all that intriguing (or stimulating).
As a spice in a more complex dish, however, erotica can play a significant role, and it does so here, revealing much about Veronica’s character and what draws her to Devlin. It helps that Heinz completely avoids the trap of eye-rolling purple prose that even great writers frequently fall into when writing about sex; for Veronica, sex red in tooth and claw is at the heart of Devlin’s dangerous appeal, and she bluntly describes it that way. The object of Veronica’s attraction is a violent psychopath, a man who seeks to manipulate and dominate other people and is even willing to commit murder without scruple. That’s not who Veronica is; despite her dark impulses, she loves her sister and even her domineering, unpleasant grandmother, an emotion psychopaths are incapable of. Yet she is drawn to Devlin despite, or rather because of, the hole where his heart should be.
At a time when legions of supposedly normal people have made themselves enthusiastic followers of an open, gloating psychopath, propelling him into the most powerful office in the world, we cannot get enough compelling depictions of the siren appeal of such monsters in human form.
[bctt tweet=”BOOK REVIEW ‘Deadly Persuasion’ by Nicole Heinz – A ‘Study in (Violent, Sexy) Character’ by Martin Berman-Gorvine @NHeinz7 @MeshuggeWriter #thriller #horror #book #review #author ” username=”theboldmom”]
