E-MAIL
PRINT“An Accidental Affair” by Eric Jerome Dickey
c. 2011, Dutton $26.95 / $28.50 Canada 352 pages
You’ll get yours.
Whatever comes around, goes around. Tit for tat, and all that. Whatever you do comes back to haunt you. For every action, there’s an equal reaction. You always reap what you sow, and payback’s a… well, you know what it is.
When James Thicke beat down Johnny Bergs for sleeping with James’ wife, it seemed that Johnny got what he deserved. But in the new book, “An Accidental Affair” by Eric Jerome Dickey, James might pay for the beating with his life.
He absolutely lost his temper.
When the steamy video went viral, screenwriter James Thicke went crazy. There it was, Johnny Bergs making real love to beautiful Regina Baptiste for the movie cameras. But Regina Baptiste was Thicke’s wife and while every man wanted to sleep with her, Thicke was the only man who had that right.
Johnny Bergs had crossed a line. So when James Thicke found Johnny that rainy night, he pounded Johnny’s handsome face into pulp.
That was Mistake Number One: Johnny was rumored to be the son of a gangster.
In order to escape the Bergs family and his feelings of anger for his wife, whom he trusted to do a love scene without actually doing a love scene, Thicke moved to a low-income apartment complex. It was a good place to hide from the Bergs, the law and his own thoughts.
Mistake Number Two: there were too many needful women at the complex, and Thicke smelled like money. It was hard to avoid them, even when he wanted to.
But then Regina Baptiste started following James Thicke, crying, begging. She claimed that the scene with Johnny Bergs was a mistake. She wasn’t herself. She never intended for it to happen. It was an accident.
Once upon a time, James Thicke stole Regina Baptiste from another man. She had been living with that Norwegian, Bobby Holland, but she didn’t love him and he was bad for her. Holland had gotten her hooked on cocaine, and Thicke knew that the powder would eventually be the death of her.
Which was Mistake Number Three: the death was likely to be James Thicke’s…
Well, there we go. Author Eric Jerome Dickey has, once again, made me stay awake until all hours of the night, losing sleep and reading.
Yes, this is one of those kinds of books.
“An Accidental Affair” starts out a little rough. It seemed, at first, that it was going to be another tiresome erotica novel… and then the story grabs you by the throat and slams you into James Thicke’s world, where the only people who can be trusted are those who’ve signed confidentiality clauses – and even then, you’re never sure.
I loved the intrigue here. I loved the touches of twisted wit. Reading “An Accidental Affair” is, in fact, like chewing on ambrosia-coated sandpaper: it’s gritty, but oh-so-very tasty.
