Gentlemen Behaving Badly (A Pleasure Emporium Novel) [Mass Market Paperback]

What could have been a really interesting book became bothersome thanks to the interaction between the hero and heroine. I wondered that they even liked each other much less loved one another.

Mina works at the Pleasure Emporium, a high class bordello. She writes erotic letters to customers hoping that her naughty words will bring in more clients to the brothel. She is no courtesan though instead she views herself as plain compared to the working girls.

Her objective besides luring in aristocrats with her purple prose is to ferret out the man responsible for sending her beloved father to a penal colony in Australia. Her father was a jeweler accused of thievery. Mina knows an aristocrat was responsible for the crime. She believes she has found the culprit through her correspondence of explicit letters with a brothel customer.

Constable Salter Lambrick is investigating the death of a city official when he discovers Mina's letter at the man's house. This leads him to Mina and he is smitten with the saucy young woman.

Salter is kind to her and reassures her that he will help her in her quest to vindicate her father but she is a bit stubborn and insistent that she will investigate too. Mina is mercurial with Salter, one minute she is affectionate the next angry and at times even enraged.

I liked Salter at first but toward the end of the book his deceptions and lack of insight were hard to forgive. Mina had every right to be angry at Salter in the later chapters of this novel but certainly not in the beginning of this story.

Even though this book is set in a brothel the lovemaking is very tame. It was a bit strange as Mina loves erotica but this facet of her personality was never really explored with Salter.

Mina Halliday has quite a way with words and she uses her naughty talents as a source of income after her father is arrested and sent to Australia. She uses her job as a letter writer at the Pleasure Emporium to try and lure certain men to the bordello where she will have her courtesan friends try and sex any pertinent information out of them. One such naughty letter lands in the hands of Constable Salter Lambrick and since it's the only clue in a high profile murder case, he goes undercover and infiltrates the Pleasure Emporium to find the naughty vixen who may or may not be a murder suspect. Instead he finds plain ol Mina and discovers that their two investigations may be connected. They try to work out a partnership and along the way Mina falls in love. If only Salter was free to return her love....

Well, first off. Michelle Marcos makes no attempt for historical accuracy. No attempt. None whatsoever. Nada. Zilch.

This book starts off pretty sexy, but it's all a big tease and our H/H don't make love until the very end of the book. It's a pretty humorous book and I enjoyed it but I don't understand why the author didn't place this story within the Victorian era. It would have made more sense with the historical accuracy but whatever. I'm actually not that big of a stickler for historical accuracy but still. It would have been nice if the author had made somewhat of an attempt. At times I thought I was reading contemporary romantic suspense. Sheesh.

Salter was a fun guy. He's kind of dense but he was a sexy character. I also thought he was an incredible a**hole. If he wasn't free he should have said something. Jerk. He also shoots at his ladylove. He honest to God aims a pistol at Mina and shoots at her. Of couse he's not aiming to kill but if I remember my gun history those pistols during that time era (1813) were notoriously inaccurate. Most times people would just aim in a general direction and hope for the best. When I read that part my jaw dropped and I thought, "that son of a b*tch just shot at her!"

Mina was a nice character. She was a little mousy but she had her moments of brilliance. I loved her naughty predilection for erotica. I also love her name. I think Mina is such a naughty, bad girl name. There was a part early on in this story, when I was about done with this book, when some guy makes a completely thoughtless and incredibly cruel remark about Mina and after that I had to keep pressing on in the hopes that she would get her HEA.

This story wasn't bad. It was actually pretty good. I enjoyed the mystery and Salter's and Mina's attempts to find the villain. When our hero isn't firing pistols at his heroine and our heroine isn't sucker punching her hero, I really liked this book. I kept going back and forth from despising it to liking it. Whenever I wanted to toss this book aside, I would at first look at the cover and stare at the male model for a while and then I would forget why I was mad and continue reading. Hehe. Try it and see if it works for you.

Dictionaries are our friends. Too bad the author was in too much of a hurry to use one--some of us actually do read and understand English; there is no excuse for the number of words misused in this book (e.g., Madame, prevaricate, needled--just within the first 10 pages).

Also, this takes place during the Regency yet "King George" is mentioned as ruling when it was actually his son the Prince Regent who ruled during this time. And there were no "Chief Constables" until later, and the phrase "cut to the chase" dates from the 1920s but is used in this book.

Obvious errors like these really detract from the story