What the Lady Wants, Jennifer Crusie
Jennifer Crusie, yay! I love Jennifer Crusie, and What the Lady Wants is a pretty good example as to why.
Let's start with our heroine, Mae Sullivan. Bright and funny and clever, Mae needs to find her uncle Armand's missing diary, but she doesn't want anyone to know that she's doing it. So she finds a gullible PI and tells him she thinks her uncle was murdered. Said gullible PI is Mitch Peatwick, who has secrets of his own, and is thoroughly, THOROUGHLY bored with the PI business. Then Mae walks in and he's suddenly living in a noir movie. Which both he and Mae lampshade at every possible opportunity, incidentally, part of the book's charm.
Anyway, turns out Armand was murdered. Turns out also that pretty much everyone in his life had a motive to murder him-- including his mistress Stormy, Mae's other two uncles the shark lawyer and the mob boss, the mob boss's son, Mae's cousin, who's into her (she is not into him), and the couple who raised Mae. Finding out who killed Armand hinges on finding his diary. Mae and Mitch's romance, on the other hand, hinges on flaming sexual attraction and mutual snarkage.
As per usual, the side characters are a joy. The romance is a bit rushed, but it's a short book, and I was okay with it, honestly. Also as per usual, it's the dialogue where this book really shines. Crusie has a real gift for dialogue and it really sparkles here, bright and funny and quick. I think I have a particular fondness for this book because it takes the piss out of film noir, and film noir and I have a mutual incompatibility, but if you like romance novels, there's really no reason you wouldn't like this one. Or, really, almost any other Crusie novel, but specifically this one is great fun.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/391461.html. Please comment over there if possible.
Let's start with our heroine, Mae Sullivan. Bright and funny and clever, Mae needs to find her uncle Armand's missing diary, but she doesn't want anyone to know that she's doing it. So she finds a gullible PI and tells him she thinks her uncle was murdered. Said gullible PI is Mitch Peatwick, who has secrets of his own, and is thoroughly, THOROUGHLY bored with the PI business. Then Mae walks in and he's suddenly living in a noir movie. Which both he and Mae lampshade at every possible opportunity, incidentally, part of the book's charm.
Anyway, turns out Armand was murdered. Turns out also that pretty much everyone in his life had a motive to murder him-- including his mistress Stormy, Mae's other two uncles the shark lawyer and the mob boss, the mob boss's son, Mae's cousin, who's into her (she is not into him), and the couple who raised Mae. Finding out who killed Armand hinges on finding his diary. Mae and Mitch's romance, on the other hand, hinges on flaming sexual attraction and mutual snarkage.
As per usual, the side characters are a joy. The romance is a bit rushed, but it's a short book, and I was okay with it, honestly. Also as per usual, it's the dialogue where this book really shines. Crusie has a real gift for dialogue and it really sparkles here, bright and funny and quick. I think I have a particular fondness for this book because it takes the piss out of film noir, and film noir and I have a mutual incompatibility, but if you like romance novels, there's really no reason you wouldn't like this one. Or, really, almost any other Crusie novel, but specifically this one is great fun.
This entry is crossposted at http://bookblather.dreamwidth.org/391461.html. Please comment over there if possible.