Style and music journalist Vanessa Craft cuts her creative teeth with a debut novel about British gentlemen’s clubs. She’s definitely on to something with heroine Emma Gordon, a listless young writer for a British tabloid who lives to read Jane Eyre on her lunch hour and escapes into daydreams whenever she can. Emma assumes a false identity to go undercover (as a stripper) for an exposé of Platinum, a kind of Moulin Rouge for the cigars-and-scotch set. Soon, she’s caught up in all the glamour and freedom her new profession affords her.

Craft can’t resist turning Emma’s daydreams into a half-hearted exploration of the masculine and feminine gaze. Put more simply – and perhaps more crudely, but what the hey – the story becomes the literary equivalent of whipping off both panties and pasties, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Glimpses of a more compelling book tease the reader throughout. Emma’s got potential: unlike other chick- lit lasses, Craft’s heroine gains self-acceptance by playing a role rather than turning inward to find her power and her voice. She doesn’t even get the guy in the end. But I don’t believe for a minute that Emma actually considers the semiotics of a little S&M while she’s on the clock.

Craft doesn’t help herself by jettisoning promising plot elements. Emma gives up writing the article, the love interest hits the road without ever having done anything, and Emma’s long-lost mother never does reappear or offer to explain herself. Instead, Craft rushes through the climax and dénouement, effectively abandoning the trajectory of her plot in favour of an easy and ultimately unbelievable ending.

The other characters, from distant dad Jack to Emma’s chilly editor to the motley crew of Platinum babes, are straight out of central casting. The character of Emma feels a little more alive, if only because her imagination is vividly portrayed and her vulnerability clearly established. Would that she had a more adventurous script.