Review: Red Light

Title: Red Light
Author: Thom Lane
Publisher: Loose Id
Publication Date: 8 February 2011
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 32,268 words

Blurb:
Jeff is a deliberate loner: he's had his heart broken once, and he won't let it happen again. Ready to rebuild his life, he goes on holiday. Alone. Until he meets Benet -- and finds that the human heart is not so easily controlled.

Unable to resist the siren call of Benet's sweet, beautiful nature, Jeff decides a fling can't hurt, but all he wants is sex and company; anything more just leads inevitably to disappointment and betrayal. But Benet slithers under his guards and breaks all Jeff's new-set rules. Will he obey his brain and stop for the Red Light or will he give in to the heart's impulse and run it?


Rating: 4 out of 5


Review:

Main Characters:
Jeff is still recovering from his lover Tony's infidelity, coping by building a wall around his heart. A fling is fine, as long as it's understood by both parties that sex is all it is; he's not looking for romance or commitment, not when it means his heart could be broken again. The long hours he works as a hospital doctor don't help in any case. He travels to Provence as a little bit of revenge against Tony--the trip had been planned for the two of them, well before the fight that ended their relationship--but finds himself at loose ends there, at least until he meets Benet.

Jeff is a steady narrator, if a bit self-deluding, but I don't feel that I ever really got to know him very well, despite the fact that the entire story is presented from his point of view. His personality never came far enough through the prose for me. I liked him well enough, but never really connected.

Benet is another British transplant, working for a year at a vineyard in Provence to experience the French way of doing things. He's sweetly unrelenting and earnest, yet entirely wanton when the situation warrants. Much like Matthieu in White Flag, he knows what he wants and goes for it. He tends to be a bit impulsive, though my favorite instance of it is at the end:

A message from Benet.

His voice sounded nervous and impatient and amused—all three at once. "Oh, hell, Jeff, where are you? I thought I'd be getting you out of bed. Are you still in bed; are you sleeping? Well, wake up, then. Please wake up. I'm at Stansted Airport, and I've done this stupid thing. I've flown in to see you. I have to see you. Only, I don't know how to find you. I don't have your address. It was just a wild impulse and it's raining buckets out there and I don't know what to do now, so I'm just going to sit here until you come to rescue me. Please come. Please come soon...?"

I found his conflict and determination to be absolutely adorable.

Although we never get to experience Benet's point of view and thus he remains more of a mystery, I nevertheless think I prefer him to Jeff; he seemed more developed as a personality, rather than a reaction to an event.

Chemistry:
Despite my ambivalence toward Jeff, I really do like them as a couple. Their mutual delusion that their relationship is just a fling is charming, especially when Jeff confronts Benet on it:

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant somewhere halfway between the château and the gîte. To be honest, I really wasn't paying attention: not to the drive except for the simple mechanics of it, not to the scenery or the towns we passed through, not to the food on my plate. I was focused entirely on the young man in the seat beside me, or now the other side of the table. How candlelight touched his hair, how the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled, how he gestured with his cutlery as he talked.

How he made me feel as young as he was. Younger. Full of joys and doubts, and helpless in their grip.

How he frowned, trying to understand me as he listened, as I tried to explain.

"It's not that I don't trust you," I said helplessly. "It's the situation, the promises... I don't believe in promises, not anymore. If Tony and I could go that sour, then anything can. And I don't believe in long-distance relationships, either. Tony and I couldn't keep it together when we were living in the same house. He said I was never there, but—well, you and me, neither of us would ever be there for the other. Two different countries, it's impossible..."

He had an odd little smile on his face as I finished. He gave his head an odd little shake; he said, "You know, I've always heard doctors were arrogant, but I never really understood till now."

"What? I just—"

"What you're saying, Jeff dear, is that there's no point my falling in love with you, because all you want is a fuckfest, and when we're done you'll just waltz off back to England and leave me with a broken heart if I've been silly enough to let that happen. That's it, isn't it?"

I flinched from that bald exposé, which was almost cruel in its revelation of my character; but I couldn't really argue with it. At heart, yes, that was what I was saying. What I wanted, except:

"I don't want to break your heart," I said, as earnestly as I could. "I'm just saying, be careful, because—"

"Trust me, Jeff," he said, "my heart is in no danger. That's the arrogance, the way you assume that I must be doing what you're far too self-controlled to do yourself. Maybe a fuckfest is all I want too. Did you think of that? Speaking of which"—draining his lonely glass of wine, which I'd bought him to soften the blow because no one should have to take such news on water—"why don't we settle up here and get in the car, go back to your sweet little gîte, and get started?"

It's easy to see they care for each other, even if they both deny it. The fact that they really heat the sheets doesn't hurt, either; Benet pushes Jeff's boundaries in appealing ways.

Secondary Characters:
The secondary cast of Red Light is identical to that of White Flag, comprised primarily of Matthieu's family. I particularly enjoyed seeing Charlie and Matthieu again to see how they were doing after White flag (and couldn't help snickering over Jeff's twigging to their relationship because Charlie kept grabbing Matthieu's butt at the airport). Unfortunately, other characters didn't come through nearly as well.

Juliette in particular pushed my buttons.

In White Flag, there's a reference to Juliette as spoiled but not ruined. I think that by the time Benet and Jeff are on the scene, she's edged more toward the ruined mark. She inserts herself into everything and gets upset when things don't go precisely the way she thinks they should. She has her good moments--she takes the first steps toward including Jeff in Benet's adoptive family--but overall I found her to be appallingly domineering and generally inconsiderate of others when their desires didn't necessarily correspond with her own. As she's such a large part of the story, swathes of it were unfortunately soured for me.

Story:
The story is simple enough, following Jeff as he overcomes his broken heart to find love with Benet. Just enough happens to keep things interesting, flowing nicely from point A to point B. It never lagged for me, and the passage of time (it takes place over about two weeks) was handled well, not dragging out every little detail but also not completely disregarding that the time was filled with other things.

Writing:
I love the writing in both this book and White Flag, but taken in comparison Red Light came up a bit short for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. The writing was still plush and enjoyable, but I never really found the same spark, the passages that made me want to reread them enough to commit them to memory. This isn't to say it doesn't have its moments; this made me smile:

I had an American boyfriend once, early on at college, who didn't like tongues at all when he kissed. Just a brush of the lips, a token of affection: California kisses, he called them. Dry and sensitive and all about the romance, really nothing to do with sex. That set my baseline for a scale, from Californian up to English kisses—as far as an uncertain teenager dares to go when he knows that tongues have something to do with the project but he really isn't sure what exactly, and he's just hoping the other guy is more experienced; there are people who spend their whole lives kissing like that, thus far and no further—and then the classic French, the full-on let's-see-if-I-can-reach-your-tonsils-this-time, which is nothing to do with romance or affection and really just all about the sex.

And here we were in France, and here was Benet trying to eat his way inside me, trying to entangle us so deeply he could turn us both inside out just with a tug on our inextricably knotted tongues. It was so far beyond French, it didn't even qualify for a country of its own; this was pan-galactic kissing, alien and soul shaking.

Overall:
Taken on its own, this book has a lot to offer: pleasant characters and a well-drawn setting, great chemistry and (mostly) likeable secondary characters. It pales a bit when held up next to its predecessor, but it's still a strong offering, an enjoyable, if brief, read. I certainly wouldn't object to more time spent in their world.