Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Sheikh’s Blackmailed Mistress “A passionate love story and a terrific adventure.

“Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters.” Diamonds are the purest and most brilliant of all precious jewels-but you readers are undoubtedly the true “jewels” in the crown that makes Harlequin Books the romance publisher. It is truly an honor and a privilege to be writing to you all now in celebration of this Diamond Anniversary. Thanks to Harlequin’s wonderful readers, there have been many special moments for me as Penny Jordan. I have the happiest memories of writing this book, and when it was accepted, it was absolutely the proudest and most exciting moment of my life. I read up on and researched Kuwait, its people and their way of life and customs, and went on from there. For this reason I chose Kuwait as the desert state I used for a background. At the same time I also wanted it to be set in a pro-West city. I knew from the outset that I wanted to give the book a desert setting. It embodied all those things I most loved myself as a reader a true alpha hero, a man who wasn’t afraid to admit that he was wrong and who gave himself and his heart completely to the woman he loved, a heroine who possessed both intelligence and vulnerability, loyalty and self respect, and a once-in-a-lifetime love for only one man. But somehow I knew from the word go that this book was different. I had several incomplete and unsubmitted attempts at a Harlequin book in my desk already when I started to write Falcon’s Prey.

For me as a reader there was-and indeed still is-something about the sheer magnificence of the desert with its fierce beauty and its danger that went perfectly with the kind of hero, heroine and story line that I most enjoyed. I’d been a keen reader and fan of Harlequin books for several years before I began to write for Harlequin myself, and right from the very first, what we now all call “sheikh” books had been my favorite.

Falcon prey book