Cruel Poetry

Renata is young, beautiful, and has sex for money and kicks. Few are immune to her intoxicating allure-even her pet Burmese python, Pepe, seems captive to her charm. Richard is one of her clients, a poetry professor with a wife and two sons, whose erotic fascination with Rennie is threatening his home and job.

Meanwhile, Julie, a shy wannabe novelist, spies on Rennie from her room next door in between bouts of frustrated writing. Both would do anything to save Rennie from her dangerous occupation and become her one true love.

Set in Miami's gaudy vacationland and the haunting atmosphere of the Everglades, Cruel Poetry is a gripping story of fatal attraction that captures the Florida behind the postcards. As the lives of Richard and Julie unravel amidst drugs and murder, Hendricks amps the adrenaline jolts and sweeps us to a bittersweet climax.

"I loved this book. It's a private ticket into a secret world of desire and sex and the raw edge between them." - Michael Connelly

"I never miss a book by Vicki Hendricks. No one on the current scene is writing super-charged, erotic, real noir novels like these." - George Pelecanos