Crimson Obsession

Deana James seems to have given up romance for nonfiction about Texas under her real name, Mona Sizer(she also wrote two books under the pseudonym Rachel Davis). This is romance's loss. Deana James took chances in her books. She did not simply rehash the last historical romance by Johanna Lindsey or Jude Deveraux. Her characters are well drawn and her plotting, although intentionally melodramatic, is original. Her books are also multi-layered.The heroine of Crimson Obsession is the only child of a Scottish earl who blew his brains out after he wasted his fortune at the gaming table. Left alone to make her way, she disguises herself as a much older woman and seeks employment in London as a housekeeper. Unfortunately, there is an shortage of available positions and she is nearing dispair when she is offered a position as housekeeper to the owner of a gaming house who lives in half of the house and runs a gaming hell in the other half. This is particularly ironic because she blames gaming houses for her father's end and her own situation.The hero is not at all well born. He is the son of a prostitute, who was taught by one of his mother's clients, a well educated man before his descent into a gin sodden haze. By dint of this teaching and his acquisition of a library thrown out by an ignorant landlord, he rose from street brat to the lofty eminence of gaming house keeper and writer of pornographic novels. By day he writes, in the evening he makes theatrical appearances in the gaming hell as one of the devil's minions presiding over a fake orgiastic black mass. He's bored by the whole thing and really just wants a reliable housekeeper to get his home back in shape.I'm not going to describe the plot further, but if you are interested in how the son of a street prostitute and the daughter of an impecunius earl comes to terms with one another, you should read this book. While it is definitely romantic fantasy and there are cliches galore, the fantasy is fun and the cliches are more often than not stood on their head for the entertainment of the reader.