Rating: 
Summary: Not a book I'd read again.
Review: Set in 1920�s deep in the Louisiana bayou Mortal Sins presents so clear a portrait of the time period it�s almost as if you were there feeling the oppressive heat and smelling all of the scents the bayou has to offer. Unfortunately, one of those scents is death. Police Officer Damon �Day� Rourke is called to the murder scene of a prominent lawyer who has been mutilated and brutally butchered and the story, for the most part, is told from Rourke�s perspective. Rourke is connected to the case in many and numerous ways and only becomes more entangled as the story unfolds. The major suspect in the murder case is the victim�s glamorous movie star wife, Remy. She�s also the one woman who broke Rourke�s young heart. Rourke thought he�d buried thoughts of Remy deep within him. He even married a woman who is now conveniently (or tragically, depending on your level of cynicism) dead and is raising his young daughter alone. Alas, when he sees Remy again all of the hurt, pain and all consuming love comes crashing back and he�s determined to prove her innocence regardless of the consequences. Things become even more complicated when Rourke learns that the �system� wants to pin the murder on his childhood friend Lucille, a beautiful black woman who was the victim�s reluctant mistress. Mortal Sins is a book rich in description. Everything from the murders, the racial tensions of the time, to the hot sweltering landscape is painted with exquisite detail. And though the book is extremely descriptive (which is important to me), it fails for me on an emotional level because most, if not all, of the characters are so intensely damaged they verge on un-likeability (especially drop-dead gorgeous, seriously disturbed Remy). In the end I truly didn�t care what happened to any of them (with the exception of the sympathetic Lucille). Rourke may be an outstanding cop but he�s a pretty neglectful father and his unflinching support of creepy Remy verges on obsession and makes him come across as a little creepy too. The characters are interesting, I�ll give them that, but it was difficult to work up any sympathy for the lot of �em because they�re all so damaged, disturbed or just plain selfish. I give this story three and 1/2 stars because the writing is rich and because I enjoyed the attention to detail and atmosphere. I also found the mystery and all of the dirty little secrets intriguing and I didn�t find it difficult to turn the pages. But these things aren�t enough to make me wait with breathless anticipating for the upcoming sequel. ~ Laurie Shallah
Rating: 
Summary: Mortal Sins
Review: Sharply defined characters, a plot within a plot, and a story as hot as New Orleans in August! Absolute page turner. If you're looking for perfect characters, then forget this book. Damon Rourke is twisted and focused on fighting his own insecurities and demons, while Remy Lelourie is self-absorbed, manipulative, and as screwed up as Damon. No one ever said fictional characters should be likable.
Rating:
Summary: Mortal Sins
Review: Sharply defined characters, a plot within a plot, and a story as hot as New Orleans in August! Absolute page turner. If you're looking for perfect characters, then forget this book. Damon Rourke is twisted and focused on fighting his own insecurities and demons, while Remy Lelourie is self-absorbed, manipulative, and as screwed up as Damon. No one ever said fictional characters should be likable.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Background, Boring People
Review: The star for this book is really for New Orleans. If the author wrote more about the city then the people who lived there, the book would have garnered more stars. Boring, self absorbed people do not an interesting book make. Damon Rourke, the lead character while having some redeeming qualities, also appears to be just a lttle nuts. While very busy seeming to care about everyone in his town, he seems to have very lttle emotion left for his young daughter. Remie Lelourie, his former lover, and leading suspect in her husband's death, is quite insane. Yet we are supposed to find these very unappealing characters, romantic star crossed lovers. I have read some reviews here that indicate Penn Williamson is a pseudonym for a romance writer. Well it shows in the plotting and prose of this book.After reading about these characters, whom I had no desire to meet, greet or even pass by on the street, my whole reaction was who cares.
Rating: 
Summary: Wow
Review: This book was outstanding. I don't say that lightly either, as I can usually find something wrong with everything. Not so, in this case. The story takes place during the flapper era in New Orleans. Ms. Williamson has a deep atmospheric style of writing that is perfect for this setting. Her characters are real and completely three dimensional, with both good and bad characteristics. Sometimes you want to hate them, but other times they're heroic. In other words, they're very real people you'd like to know. It's a great mystery with a surprise ending. I highly recommend it for a hot summer day.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: This book was outstanding. I don't say that lightly either, as I can usually find something wrong with everything. Not so, in this case. The story takes place during the flapper era in New Orleans. Ms. Williamson has a deep atmospheric style of writing that is perfect for this setting. Her characters are real and completely three dimensional, with both good and bad characteristics. Sometimes you want to hate them, but other times they're heroic. In other words, they're very real people you'd like to know. It's a great mystery with a surprise ending. I highly recommend it for a hot summer day.
Rating:
Summary: DREAMS LOST IN SHADOWS
Review: This is not a Jamie Lee Burke David Robichaux knock off. Both novels involve a tough talking New Orleans detective, but that is where the similarity ends. The writing styles are completely different. Robicheaux is a bit wistful, leading an existential existance, driven to longing by the years of loss he has witnessed. Penn's Daman Rourke (and you can't help recalling Mickey Rourke in Wild Orchid at that), the lead character in her novel, is an aristocrat with a shield and in a shining armor, who rides both a motorcycle, and fast car, and was an ace during WW I. He is a regular Prince Charming with a brooding twist that makes him more attractive to an equally dark heroine in waiting, a Wild Woman careening out of control. These characters are larger than life and are perfect, like Grecian idols or James Bond, who can cook a gourmet meal, kill with his little finger, fly a plane and do rocket science. Williams' lead characters never change and they don't falter, like the heroes in Shekespearean tragedies, but remain static icons.
The beginning of the novel has all the makings of a hardboiled detective mystery, but that is not the case, rather than being cynical, the hero is a romantic, living in a corrupt world, way ahead of his time, acting like the knight in shining armor, never having to face the consequences of his actions. Rather than dealing with the mystery or writing believably about regular peoples' lives, as mysteries tend to do, this one obssesses with family secret and intrigue. The atmosphere and the and the detective's dark past are there for atmosphere and have no impact on what happens.
The writing is detailed and engrossing, but tends to ramble and dwell too much on family intrigue like a daytime TV Soap.
Rating:
Summary: Penn Williamson is NOT a MAN!
Review: This is the new name for former romance writer Penelope Williamson who has joined the ranks of writers looking for legitimacy and validation by moving their romance novels into the mystery genre. None of them get rid of the romance; they just toss a mystery into the hopper to get the novel over onto the mystery aisle of your local bookstore. Williamson succeeds better than virtually all other romance writers, excepting J.D. Robb, who are attempting this genre switch, however, to date. The only mistake she made was in having too many characters. Specifically, the hero's whole Irish contingent of friends from childhood, especially Maguire who has become a bootlegger and cohort of Al Capone's, need to be dropped or minimized. I think Williamson thought she could lead us off the trail of the real murderer by exploring this Irish contingent but, instead, it just interfered with the otherwise perfect, direct, narrative thrust of her novel, involving everyone who intersects with the bloodlines of the Rourkes and the LeLourlies of New Orleans. The hero's mother is a Rourke and the heroine's father was a LeLourlie and that couple lived in sin together for 16 years after leaving their families, including their children, behind them. Williamson would have earned a perfect 5 from me if she had just stuck with these two bloodlines. I thought the cover was primarily atmospheric of the 1927 New Orleans setting but, by the time I closed the book, I realized the cover depiction of the New Orleans cemetery was at the very essence of the underlying mystery. If you want to read perfect Williamson, try her "The Passions Of Emma" which was her novel before this one. I am willing to try her second mixed-genre blend novel, shelved on the more "respectable" mystery aisle, based on the strong points of this first novel to be found there.
Rating:
Summary: New Orleans Distilled
Review: This murder mystery is set in New Orleans during Prohibition, and is full of every stereotype and feature of New Orleans imaginable...crawfish, jambalaya, Creole cooking, hooch, moonshine, flappers, gris-gris, voodoo, the loop-garou, oaks dripping with moss, crypts, above-ground cemeteries, speak-easies, gangsters, mulatto mistresses, Mardi-Gras, bayou, shrimp, jazz, mournful saxophone playing, humidity, swamp, pirogue, bootleggers, beignettes, cottages built on stilts, sugar cane, cattails, gambling, horse racing.... It's as much a travelogue as a fictional novel. The story begins with the brutal slaying of Charles St. Claire in the one-time slave cabin on his property. His wife, the beautiful and famous Hollywood actress Remy LeLourie, is found with his blood-covered body in her arms and her thumbprint on the caning knife that was used to slash him to death. Her one-time lover, New Orleans detective Damon Rourke is assigned to the case. He is reluctant to believe that she is guilty, and as other murders and bodies litter his path during the investigation, the case gets more and more complex. The story alternates between flash backs which help to describe why the characters act the way they do now, and the present scenes, which are full of mysterious plot turns and unexplained nuances. All of the characters are complex and are not what they appear to be at first. The ending is surprising and brings together all the loose ends and justifies the actions of many of the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Lotsa fun...
Review: Very juicily-written swamp-saga, with yummy, Faulknerian characters and a detective who should be played by Russell Crowe if it's made into a movie. Loved it, but had to ask, throughout: is Ms. Williamson a fan of James Lee Burke? Check it out: Burke's detective is Dave Robicheau, hers is Damon Rourke; Burke's detective's wife is dead and he's the father of a small girl (so is Rourke); Robicheau's partner disappeared, was believed dead - Rourke's, too. Remi LeLourie is the most beautiful, sexiest woman in the world - so is every woman Robicheau has ever wedded or bedded. Oh. That's a standard guy-thing. But it's MS. Williamson, n'est-ce pas? Anyway, even if she has copied Burke's plot-and-character-lines, it's still a fab story I didn't want to stop reading, and of course it takes place in the whoring twenties, with lots of history about New Orleans so it's well worth the ride.
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