If you’re doing something in the first place, no sense being timid about it.
That’s why I chose the title with the raciest cover art. She was in a pink and lace number, one shoulder pulled off to barely expose one of her you-know-whats. He was kneeling behind her, muscles bulging bigger than Arnold’s, lips but a few millimeters from her.
Ah, romance.
And maybe that’s why Recorded Books (800-638-1304) did the full-length version of Heather Graham’s “Captive,” touted as a “lusty tale of intrigue and passion.” As long as they were going to do it, why not, if you’ll excuse the expression, go all the way?
But good grief, the recording is 16 hours! And it costs $91!! Even the 30-day rental is $18.50!!!
Who the heck is going to go for this stuff?
I have to tread carefully here. I know and like lots of people who think romances are swell. But do we really need to put professional actors in a studio and spend probably 200 hours producing “Captive”? Not to mention Janet Dailey’s 13-hour “Notorious,” or Julie Garwood’s 14-hour “The Wedding,” or Amanda Quick’s 12-hour “Mischief.”
It sets my heart to fluttering . . . with outrage. This is like sitting down to a formally set table–china, silver, crystal, the works–and being served a Big Mac.
The audio genre used to be small enough that only the best titles could be recorded. Even at that, most were abridged. But now that the selection is broadening, the quality seems to be lessening. Things are out of sync. Next thing you know, the Philadelphia Orchestra will be doing “Louie, Louie.”
The story itself–“Captive”–is an exercise in titillation and frustration. As in this scene: The hero (a striking, Seminole “half-breed”) takes off his shirt and wanders onto the moonlit balcony. The whole point being to enable the heroine (she of the flowing, radiant tresses) to see his abdominal muscles (rippling ones, of course) and get all breathless.
But what happens instead? We spend eons with the hero alone as he stares into the night and contemplates the Indian war he is embroiled in.
Only after I am dying of boredom does the heroine finally don her nightgown (translucent, of course) and come out to gaze at the moon herself, thus setting up the inevitable steamy meeting.
By the end of the fourth tape, everything started to sound the same and I gave it up.
Maybe in a book it works because readers can zip through. But on tape, the time-wasted factor skyrockets. Instead of being a pleasant diversion, it thuds along under the import of the narration.
In real life, kisses are over all too soon. In “Captive,” a little nuzzle seemed to last too long.
