You take two people who used to be lovers, a little bit of boredom (for lack of a better word), mix it up a bit and what you have is this story. The Vicomte de Valmont and Marquise de Merteuil used to have a thing together. As often with ex-lovers, they fancy themselves now a couple of rivals, and they get their jollies by corrupting other people by manipulating their sexual desires. The other characters in the story are merely pawns in Valmont's and Merteuil's games - the story is an epistolary novel, told through their letters and those letters of the other pawn-like characters. Through this mechanism the reader sort of gets in the mind of every character and in a sense gets to see the circumstances through their eyes.

Pretty smart idea, really.

My biggest beef is that there's very little change in voice from letter to letter. The characters are all mainly aristocratic, but there's no telling whose letter it is unless you look at the header of each one. I think the story could have been even more convincing if there were differences between the characters, giving them more life and some meat on their bones. When the only plot of the story is within a series of letters it's important to be able to distinguish between the characters.

Still, it's a great story and one that rears its head in some of the strangest places. You ever see the 1999 film, Cruel Intentions? You can thank Choderlos de Laclos for that one.