Enemy Queen: A Novel

by Robert Steven Goldstein

Overview

When Stanley Berman, a Jewish New York attorney, is appointed Chief Counsel at a North Carolina University, he opts to share a house with his good friend, Thomas McClellan, a professor in the school’s English Department. The men spend their evenings drinking wine, playing chess, and lamenting their ineptitude with women. Then the Professor, a Southern good old boy, former high school football lineman, and avid hunter, hatches a scheme to bring a young woman into the house, insisting that as a creative writing teacher, such women find him alluringly subversive and artistic. The Counselor is dubious but persuaded nonetheless—much to his detriment.

The articulate but bumbling Counselor and Professor find themselves outwitted at every turn by Victoria, a young woman who is clever, inscrutable, and superb at finishing what she starts. She initiates passionate sexual encounters with the men, but as time goes on, what she demands in return becomes untenable. When she goes missing, John Watson, the county sheriff—and the Professor’s lifelong friend—feels compelled to open a murder investigation.

Full of wicked humor, artful eroticism, scintillating dialogue, and a bit of intrigue, Enemy Queen is an exhilarating romp set in a North Carolina college town.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684630264
Publisher:	SparkPress
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert Steven Goldstein retired from his job as a healthcare information executive at age fifty-six and has been writing novels ever since. His first novel, The Swami Deheftner, about the problems that ensue when ancient magic and mysticism manifest in the twenty-first century, has developed a small cult following in India. Cat’s Whisker, his second novel, will be published soon; an excerpt from it, entitled “An Old Dog,” was featured in the fall 2018 edition of Leaping Clear, a literary journal. Enemy Queen is his third novel. Robert Steven Goldstein has practiced yoga, meditation, and vegetarianism for over fifty years. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now lives in San Francisco with his wife of thirty years and two rambunctious dogs.

Editorial Reviews

Each paragraph of the story is as unpredictably peculiar as the next—the plot is a tantalizingly original puzzle, dramatically gripping, erotically electric, and satisfyingly weird. A hilarious dark comedy that explores the nature of friendship through the lens of sexual licentiousness.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-05-22
Two roommates—an attorney and a professor—share a young woman sexually, a sordid arrangement that turns dangerous in this novel.

Stanley Berman and Thomas McClellan both work at North Carolina University—the former as its head attorney and the latter as a professor of creative writing in the English department. They’re also roommates joined by a profound but lighthearted sense of camaraderie—they spend their days drinking fine wine, playing chess, and gamely arguing “like an old married couple.” Both are romantically unattached—in fact, Stanley is twice divorced, and Thomas thrice. Sexually frustrated, Thomas concocts a peculiar plan, a way to consummate their friendship heterosexually, not platonically. He’ll find them a “go-between,” a young woman they can both bed and, by some incestuous transitivity, sleep “with each other through her.” Ideally, she would move in and keep house, too. Astonishingly, Thomas finds someone: Victoria Templeton, a beautiful, vivacious young woman who aspires to be a “lady writer.” She audits Thomas’ writing class and quickly becomes embroiled in a bizarre sex triangle with the two men, the increasingly inventive choreography of which is amusingly described by Goldstein (The Swami Deheftner, 2013). But their arrangement starts to sour when the two friends both tire of her quirks and then become frightened by her domineering narcissism. She compels them to wear “chastity devices” to prevent them from masturbating. Deciding she’s “deranged,” they plot to get rid of her but anxiously worry how she’ll respond, especially after she issues a thinly veiled threat: “If people found out that a tenured professor and the university counsel were doing this kind of threesome with a young woman, don’t you think they’d find it inappropriate?” The author’s humor is as deliciously subversive as Thomas considers himself to be—raunchily funny and psychologically daring. In addition, the relationship between the two protagonists—despite the boundaries it luridly transgresses—is brilliantly wholesome, even touching. Each paragraph of the story is as unpredictably peculiar as the next—the plot is a tantalizingly original puzzle, dramatically gripping, erotically electric, and satisfyingly weird.

A hilarious dark comedy that explores the nature of friendship through the lens of sexual licentiousness.

Kirkus Reviews