Popular romance and romantic suspense novelist Iris Johansen is a prolific writer, having published seven novels in 1984, eight novels in 1988, and more than one novel in most other years since 1983. Quantity of output, however, has not stopped her from being an innovator, in the view of Barbara E. Kemp in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers. "She has stretched the boundaries of the standard formulas in the category romance field and has written some of the best historical romance novels," declared Kemp.
Johansen writes category romances set in several historical eras and has become known for the conviction with which she describes bygone places and people. Her characterizations are considered among the more complex in the genre. As for sex, Kemp pointed out that the presence of one or more long seduction scenes is a hallmark of Johansen's work, and that, although the seduction often contains "an element of punishment," it is always made clear that the heroine is not in real physical danger.
