Title:  Once Is Never Enough: Revenge Never Sleeps
Author:  Monique Gliozzi
Publisher: ‎ Tellwell Talent
ISBN: ‎ 0228879213
Pages: ‎ 224
Genre:  Suspense / Thriller
Reviewed by:  David Allen

Hollywood Book Reviews 

Larissa La Roche, the anti-heroine of this heartstopper tale of misadventure and revenge, has it all. She is the scion of a Napa Valley wine family; she gets to fly around the globe in her persona of flight attendant; she seems to have landed the ideal mate. Yet all is not right in her world. At the age of ten, she witnesses first-hand the murder of her mother. This tragedy is succeeded by others, some life-changing, others more ‘casual.’ Insensitivity and shallowness merge insensibly into violence and horror. The common thread is the presence of a predatory misogynistic male.

Once Is Never Enough: Revenge Never Sleeps, among other things, is a fascinating window on the psychology and modus operandi of a serial killer. In this case, the serial killer is female…a woman energized by a tragic concatenation of circumstance that ultimately spells revenge. What’s more, the book is a tongue-in-cheek (but finally livid) commentary on institutional chauvinism and the rapacious objectification of women.

Our serial killer gets away with murder. To the world, she is a happy, successful and very accomplished person. In her heart, she is a seething maelstrom of untrammeled rage. The devolving plot, the character depictions, are the stuff of great suspense reading; they are also a trenchant commentary on our violence-ridden times.

The writing is masterful, adroit, always one step ahead of the reader. Monique Gliozzi, the author of this remarkable potboiler, knows whereof she writes: she is a commercial pilot; a medical school graduate with expertise in forensic psychiatry; and she has previously published other novels in the genre. Dr. Gliozzi’s familiarity with foreign ports of call comes through – especially in the second half of the book, where readers get to sample tasty aliquots of homes away from home. Although not quite auto-fiction, the book and its memorable cast of characters are distillations of the writer’s myriad and fascinatingly diverse self.

In Once Is Never Enough: Revenge Never Sleeps, Special FBI Agent Isabella Ashford returns to track down a super-capable villainess across continents and time. (Readers of airport fiction are in for a particularly grisly flight.) But this book goes beyond airport fiction: it is an expert portrait of a sociopath and of toxic personalities, and of the flammable mixture that can result from mixing them. Be forewarned: in this book – as in life itself – justice is not always served. But the elements of a possible sequel are deliciously present, and readers can hope for the best – and more!

Hollywood Book Reviews