"Wish List for a Perfect Man"

Linda Howard's new romantic suspense, MR. PERFECT, arrived in the morning, I started it in the afternoon, and I finished it that night. Go buy this book!

The premise is that four friends who work together make up one of those "wish lists" for their perfect man. They are just having fun over drinks after work on Friday, but the thing snowballs. One of the women shows it to someone else at work, it ends up in the unofficial company newsletter, someone posts it on the web, the local paper runs it as a human-interest story, it gets pick up by a national news team . . . It's just the type of silly personality story news shows use to fill in a slow news week, but someone objects to this description of "Mr. Perfect" and decides the women responsible must be punished. Punishment means killing them in a particularly brutal manner and destroying all "feminine" items in their homes.

I loved the hero and both the sexual tension and the suspense. There are short bits from the villain's thoughts scattered throughout, and the identity of the villain is revealed a few chapters from the end, but you don't get the real "why" until the very end.

But the best thing was the list itself! (This isn't a spoiler -- it's printed on the book jacket.) Physical/sexual characteristics don't appear until item 7 on the list (and the list is in priority order). The women have a funny/serious discussion about what they REALLY want, and although good in bed and "10 inches" do get mentioned, they are all in agreement that other factors are a lot more important. They think about the problems in their current and past relationships as illustration for what they truly need and want in a man. The list is:

1. Faithful. Doesn't cheat or lie. 2. Nice. 3. Dependable. 4. Steady job. 5. Sense of humor. 6. Money's nice. 7. Good to look at. 8. Great in bed.

Oh, the funniest lines in the book? When the women are discussing the issue of 'size' and several are specifying 10 inches, the heroine says "Anything over eight inches is strictly for show-and-tell. It's there, but you can't use it. It might look good in a locker room, but let's face it — those extra two inches are leftovers." The hero later says to her "And just for the record, I don't have anything for show-and-tell. I'm just happy I'm not in the point-and- laugh category." The heroine laughs so hard she falls on the floor — so did I.

Reviewed by Raelene Gorlinsky
Posted September 3, 2001