Portia Da Costa & the fun of anonymous dirty letters

I love books about librarians. I love books with letters in them, and I love excellently smutty books. Needless to say, I was super excited to get In Too Deep, Portia Da Costa's latest, which manages to be all three.

From the back: Librarian Gwendolyne Price begins to find indecent proposals and sexy stories in her suggestion box. [..etc.]

So, I'm only just past the first letter, but it occurred to me that Portia Da Costa really sort of set herself a hard task. (Well, maybe not hard for her, but it seemed so to me). And that is, how do you make anonymous dirty letters not stalkerly or creepy?

Portia Da Costa pulls it off by making them well written, even slyly literary, like you can sense a mind behind them that's intelligent and observant and thoughtful (in addition to being face-reddeningly indecent).  I'm finding it all highly enjoyable.

I'll be interested in how she cranks the letters concept up through the book. I have an idea already of who wrote them. Yay!

Look at the cover - isn't it great? With all the books?

Reading in general, not to mention writing longhand letters, are both sort of bookish, buttoned-up things to do, old-fashioned activities with a slower pace, but then you look at the content and it's another thing altogether. 

This whole thing appeals to me greatly, I don't know why. Maybe it appeals to my own inner prim-on-the-outside librarian.