The blow was hard enough so that she reeled backward against the wall. This book has archaic gender stereotypes as well, as evidenced by this later interaction between Nick and Justine: Without thinking, he slapped her. This book, which I thought would appeal to my love of thrillers and Asian culture, may appeal more to females in my life that last read the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. But considering how little either of these characters are fleshed out at this juncture of the book, why should I be emotionally invested in one of them shoving their finger up the other's asshole?

Let's also make it clear that I am not a prude and have no problems with sex in literature. The next scene they share together ends with this sentence: She licked at his neck as he used his hands on her, all over, increasing her pleasure, riding high within her, and at the end, when she found the tension almost unbearable, when the sweat and the saliva ran down her arms and between her breasts, pooling in her navel, when his frictioning against her was so intense that it took on a kind of third dimension, she used her inner muscles once, twice, heard him gasp, felt herself balancing on the brink, the thudding of their hearts heavy in her inner ear, whispering to him, 'Come, darling, come - ohhh!' gasped out as she felt his probing finger, slick with their mingled juices, at the opening of her anus and lost all control, filled with fire all the way up to her throat.Let's set aside that this unwieldy chunk of text is one sentence that contains twenty commas. It starts out promisingly, with an intriguing assassination, but from there switches gears to protagonist Nicholas Linnear, who has just quit his job as an advertising executive, watching a drowned corpse being pulled from the ocean near his house, where he literally runs into his neighbor Justine. I decided to read this book for two reasons: The title grabbed my interest, and I recognized the author as the guy who took over the Bourne franchise after Robert Ludlum's death.

The ninja book by eric van lustbader