New Book Alert: All Sins Fulfilled (The Desire Card Book 3) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; The Desire Card, a Customer's Story

 

New Book Alert: All Sins Fulfilled (The Desire Card Book 3) by Lee Matthew Goldberg; The Desire Card, a Customer's Story

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: One thing that I have learned in reading The Desire Card series, if one ever uses that card identity theft is the least of their concerns. In fact by the time Desire's leader, Clark Gable and his cohorts are through with their hapless customer, they would hope that their identity would have been the only thing that was taken.

In this volume in Lee Matthew Goldberg's addictive and intense psychological thriller crime series, the point of view shifts from Gable's employees and underlings to a customer, the wealthy folk who are given the card and the promise that any wish will be fulfilled for the right price.

This latest victim on Gable's hit list is Harrison Stockton. Unlike the previous lead characters Jake Barnum and J.D. Storm, Harrison is high up on the economic scale. He climbed from a lower middle class upbringing to marry wealthy heiress, Helene Howell. He works in Mergers & Acquisitions while Helene is involved in various philanthropic organizations. They live in a swank apartment on Fifth Avenue and have two children named Gracie and Brenton and a cat named Chauncey. Harrison seems to have everything but then just as quickly ends up with nothing.

He loses his cushiony job. His troubled argumentative marriage with Helene ends in separation. We can't even say at least Harrison still has his health because he learns that he has liver disease and needs a transplant. After a suspenseful, if a bit overlong, section in India where Harrison searches for a possible donor and surgeon only to learn that he has been conned, he turns his attention to a card that his former boss gave him. A card that earlier had granted his wish for a prostitute and now says that he will be given a liver. A card that is new to him but far from new to the Reader: The Desire Card.

In the third volume to the series, it is great that we are given an outsider's perspective to the Card. In the first two volumes, we are told that the Card honors the wishes of the wealthy elite. Now, we see one of the wealthy elites that benefit from the Desire Card's services and pays for people like Jake and J.D. to live and fill their own wishes. We see that getting one's wishes fulfilled and being a Desire client isn't any better than being an employee. There are still strings attached, violent bloody strings, and the wealthy client that gets those services can be just as imprisoned and just as in danger as the poor employee that does those services. In Harrison's case, he realizes that his wealth and connections won't protect him from the Desire's real schemes. 

In his own way, Harrison is just as lost as Jake and J.D. are. He was insulated from the real world in his climb to the top. When he is face to face with this violent world, Harrison's conscience gets the better of him and he realizes that he can't let innocent people suffer so he can get his wishes met. When Harrison realizes the cost, his own life is threatened. As we all know, once the Desire Card has you, they aren't the type to let you go.

What is missing from this volume is the secrecy and eccentricity of the previous books in the series. We only see the Hollywood masked hoodlums a few times so they aren't as present as they were in the past. In fact the ones that we do meet are familiar in their assumed and real identities: James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth, et al. Yep, it's the exact same characters from Prey No More. In fact, it becomes apparent that All Sins Fulfilled serves as a midquel to Book 2 so we actually do know who some of those masked men and women are anyway.

What All Sins Fulfilled lacks in secrecy, it finally makes up for in answers. We finally get some solutions to the questions that have been hounding this series since Immoral Origins. I dare not reveal them, but it makes sense that Goldberg saves the big reveals for this volume, where it makes the biggest impact.

It also is cleverly revealed because there were hints in the previous books that this was the trajectory and plan all along. It will be fun for the amateur armchair detective to go back through the series and locate the clues that had been staring at us in the face for three books.

However, there is some wiggle room in the answers that we are given to call more tantalizing theories and ask questions that could still happen.

The timing of Prey No More and All Sins Fulfilled occurring at the same time and the answers that we are finally given in All Sins make the climactic ending in Prey No More even more traumatizing. Goldberg has at least two more volumes in the series. Book 4 demands for a confrontation, possibly a final resolution. I'm not sure what is in store for Book 5, maybe a prequel on how the Desire Card began. Whatever it is, my greatest wish right now is to read what happens.