Getting Off: A Novel of Sex and Violence

MWA Grand Master Block revives his Jill Emerson alias for the first time since the 1970s for this extremely violent erotic novel that works better as soft-core porn than as noir. As a child growing up in smalltown Minnesota, femme fatale Kit Tolliver suffers years of sexual abuse from her father. Blaming her mother for failing to stop the incest, she fakes her quarreling parents' murder-suicide and gets away with it. Her neighbors view her as a brave survivor of a devastating trauma. As a grown woman suffering from long-lasting and deep-seated psychological wounds, Tolliver devotes her life to seeking out and killing men she's slept with. At one point as she travels around the U.S., she has to turn investigator to track down some of her quarry. Tolliver, who hasn't a shred of remorse for her victims, isn't a particularly appealing antiheroine, and after the first few slayings, the action drags. (Sept.)