Review of "Flop Dead Gorgeous: An Andy Carpenter Mystery" by David Rosenfelt

In this 27th book in the 'Andy Carpenter' series, the Paterson, New Jersey defense attorney represents a Hollywood actress accused of murder.

*****

Ever since he inherited a large fortune, defense lawyer Andy Carpenter takes very few cases.



Instead, Andy likes to hang out with his wife, son, and dogs; watch sports; schmooze with his friends; help run a canine rescue operation called 'The Tara Foundation'; and so on. Still, Andy accepts the occasional client when there's a good reason.



Andy is a sarcastic quipster whose frequent wisecracks make him unpopular with cops, prosecutors, and judges. So it's lucky that Andy knows his way around a courtroom, because he needs all his skills to defend film star Jenny Nichols.



Jenny Nichols grew up in Paterson, and is in town to film a movie in New York. As it happens, Jenny and Andy dated very briefly in high school, and - now that Jenny is a famous celebrity - Andy mentions this 'dating history' every other minute, to anyone and everyone.

In any case, Andy arranges a dinner party for Jenny at his favorite eatery, Charlie's Sports Bar.





The guests are having a good time, enjoying the food and drinks, when the party is crashed by Jenny's ex-boyfriend, and current co-star, Ryan Griffin. Ryan is rude and pushy and insists that Jenny leave the party with him. Instead, Ryan and his bodyguards get thrown out by some of the guests, who know their way around a fight.



The next morning Ryan is found dead in the New Jersey house where Jenny is staying. Ryan was stabbed with a kitchen knife, and Jenny is arrested for murder. Andy immediately agrees to represent the actress, and he and his wife Laurie invite Jenny and her miniature poodle Mamie - who was adopted from The Tara Foundation - to stay with them pending trial.



Andy knows the best way to exonerate Jenny is to find the real killer, and he engages 'The K Team' detective agency to make inquiries. The K Team investigators are: Andy's wife Laurie - a former police officer;



Corey Douglas - a retired cop; Simon Garfunkel - a K-9 German shepherd who worked with Corey at the Paterson Police Department;



and Marcus Clark - the toughest, scariest guy on the planet.



In a scene where Andy and The K-Team are interviewing Ryan's belligerent bodyguards - Ruben, Danny, and Gurley - Ruben challenges Marcus to go out in the alley. Andy notes, "We just wait for the resolution of the dispute between the Moron Formerly Known as Ruben and Marcus. Unless Ruben has a marine battalion waiting in the alley to have his back, he is in major trouble. And even then......"

In addition to The K Team, Andy calls in his accountant Sam Willis - who can hack into any computer anywhere;



his assistant attorney Eddie Dowd - who's especially good with paperwork;



and his secretary Edna - who's too busy scouting locations for her destination wedding to actually do any work (so far Edna has ruled out North Korea and Somalia).



Andy also flies out to Hollywood to get the scoop on the victim, Ryan Griffin.



Andy learns that Ryan was independently wealthy; was a producer as well as an actor; was a heavy drug user; was a flagrant womanizer; was involved with a new streaming service; and was connected with a Belorussian gangster called Sergey Bondar. When more dead bodies turn up, Andy feverishly tries to prove that thugs were involved in all the homicides, including Ryan.

In between working hard to prepare for trial.....



.....Andy walks his dogs; watches baseball games; worries about his 14-year-old son Ricky's summer trip with a teen group; and so on. Musing about Ricky's vacation, Andy observes, "He's leaving tomorrow for the teen tour. I have this irrational fear that he's leaving a little kid, but in eight weeks is going to come back twenty-two years old, with a full beard wanting his own apartment."



Andy and his team eventually unearth a diabolical scheme that could conceivably happen in real life.

I'm a fan of the Andy Carpenter mysteries but this book isn't among the best in the series. The story has too many ancillary characters and the plot is confusing. Still, I enjoyed the mystery novel, which has a lot of Rosenfelt's usual humor.

Thanks to Netgalley, David Rosenfelt, and St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3 stars

Review of "The Librarianist: A Novel" by Patrick deWitt

In 2005, seventy-one year old Bob Comet leads a quiet life. Every day, the retired librarian wakes up in his mint-colored Portland, Oregon house.....

.....and spends his time reading, cooking, eating, tidying, and walking.



Bob has no friends, no family, and feels no craving for company. Bob had a very fulfilling career, and now communicates with the world by walking through it and reading about it.

Then one day, Bob pauses in his daily walk to stop at a 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee.



Inside the store, Bob sees a white-haired woman - who appears to be mesmerized - staring at the cold beverages.



The woman has a laminated card on a string around her neck, that reads, "My name is Chip, and I live at the Gambell-Reed Senior Center." Bob guides Chip back to Gambell-Reed where he meets the manager, a friendly lady called Maria, who gives Bob a tour of the premises.



Bob becomes a volunteer at Gambell-Reed Senior Center, and gets acquainted with both residents and day users. These include:

Chip: the semi-catatonic woman Bob helped home from the 7-Eleven; Chip runs away as often as she can, but never very far or very fast.

Brighty: an inquisitive lady who's been married five times because she likes a big party.



Linus Webster: a lively fellow who whizzes around in a wheelchair; Linus was once as handsome as Paul Newman, but ruined his appearance with dissolute behavior.



Jill: a day visitor who can't feel her thumbs and likes to do jigsaw puzzles.



Bob's interactions with the people at Gambell-Reed greatly enrich his life, and provide some adventures as well.

Between scenes in the present, there are flashback's to Bob's past. These depict experiences that greatly influenced the librarian's life.

👨‍🔧 As a youth, Bob became friendly with a middle-aged autodidact named Sandy, who was a librarian. Sandy inspired Bob's ambition to become a librarian himself.



👨‍🔧 At the age of eleven, Bob ran away from home and had an exceptional adventure with two variety show artists named June and Ida.



👨‍🔧 When Bob was a young man, he fell in love with a woman named Connie and made a best friend called Ethan. The interactions among these three led to the best and worst times in Bob's life.







Everything comes full circle toward the end of the book, when Bob comes face to face with some surprising truths.

The novel is a bit slow-moving, but I enjoyed this character study that contains both comedy and drama.



Thanks to Netgalley, Patrick deWitt, and Ecco for a copy of the manuscript.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Review of "Yellowface: A Novel" by R.F. Kuang

Publishing is a competitive industry, and only a limited number of novelists can make it big. So it's not surprising that a struggling author would be envious of a friend's wild success. This is certainly the case with June Hayward and Athena Liu. The women, now in their late-twenties, met as freshman at Yale University, and maintained a casual friendship ever since.

After Yale, June struggled to publish her first book, which didn't do very well. Now June is having trouble penning a second novel, and she's doing other jobs on the side.



Meanwhile, Athena's debut novel got a six-figure-advance, and her publishing career took off from there. Now June is just getting by while Athena is very well off and in negotiations with Netflix.



June is a white woman, and in her mind, at least......



......part of Athena's success is because Athena is a beautiful, elegant, sophisticated Chinese-American female.



June observes, "So of course Athena gets every good thing, because that's how the industry works. Publishing picks a winner - someone attractive enough, someone cool and young and, oh, we're all thinking it, let's just say it, "diverse" enough - and lavishes all its money and resources on them."

June feels vicious jealousy, and looking at Athena thinks, "What is it like to be you? What is it like to be so impossibly perfect, to have every good thing in the world?" And because of a freak accident, June gets to find out.



June and Athena are in Athena's apartment, celebrating Athena's Netflix coup, when they get drunk and decide to have a pancake eating contest. Athena chokes to death on a soggy flapjack, leaving behind THE ONLY COPY (a typed one) of a just finished manuscript that no one else has ever seen. (This plot point requires a massive suspension of disbelief in my opinion.)



In any case, Athena's new tome is about the Chinese Labour Corps in World War I: poor Chinese laborers who left their villages to do unskilled labor for Britain, freeing British men to fight in the war.

June steals Athena's manuscript, does some editing, and publishes the book as her own. June uses the pen name Juniper Song, and commissions an author photo that makes her look tan and a bit ethnic. The published novel, called 'The Last Front', is a huge success, and June glories in the accolades, doing all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify putting her name on the book as sole author.



For instance, June thinks to herself, "Athena died before anyone knew the manuscript existed. It would never have been published, or if it had, in its current state, it would always have been known as Athena's half-finished manuscript.....I gave it a chance to go out into the world without the judgment that multiple authorship always entails.....And maybe Athena would have wanted this.....She was always into trippy literary hoaxes like this....So perhaps we can view this as Athena's great literary prank," etc. etc. June's thoughts go around and around in an attempt to assuage her guilt.

Of course Athena's fans get suspicious of June's sudden brilliance, and note that the writing style of 'The Last Front' matches that of Athena's other books. Soon enough the shit hits the fan, social media blows up, and June has a tough time fending off the attackers.



The pressure gets to June, and she gets a little unhinged thinking she'll lose her fame and good reputation. June recalls, "I burst into wails, loud and ugly, wanton like a toddler's. My own volume frightens me; I'm scared my neighbors will hear, so I turn my face into my pillow, and that's how I stay, muffled and hysterical, for hours." Things escalate as June's guilt eats away at her, exacerbated by the scathing remarks of her critics.



To some extent this feels like an 'insiders' book, with issues that would be especially familiar to people in the publishing industry. Still, the topics of diversity and theft are easily comprehensible, and the book is well-written and engaging. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4 stars

Review of "Mrs. Plansky's Revenge: A Cozy Thriller" by Spencer Quinn

Seventy-one year old Loretta Plansky is having a pleasant retirement in Punta D'Oro, Florida.

Years ago, Loretta and her husband Norm made millions of dollars with their patented 'Plansky Toaster Knife', which slices and toasts bread simultaneously. After Norm passed, Loretta moved into a pretty little condo, and though Loretta misses Norm terribly, she's enjoying her life - shopping, playing tennis, seeing her friends, etc.



Loretta is comfortable financially, and her family seems to view her as something like an ATM machine. Loretta's daughter Nina and son Jack request hundreds-of-thousands of dollars for sure-to-fail business ventures;





and Loretta spends nearly $10,000 a month for her cranky, 98-year-old father's upscale retirement home.



Thus Loretta doesn't give it a second thought when she gets a middle-of-the-night phone call from her grandson Will.



The line is fuzzy, but Loretta can hear Will say he needs $9,000+ to bail himself out for a DUI, and to get his car out of impound. Loretta sends the money to 'Safemo' - which Will says is the best - and which requires Loretta's banking password. Unfortunately, the call is not from Will at all. The call is from a scammer, and by the following morning Loretta finds out she's been bilked out of all her money - nearly $4,000,000.



Loretta has a meeting with bankers and FBI agents, who say they'll investigate the theft. However, the FBI cautions Loretta that these scams originate in Eastern Europe, and Loretta is unlikely to get her money back.



Loretta is no shrinking violet and she's angry. Thus, when Loretta learns the cyberthieves are in Romania, she makes her way to the American Embassy in Bucharest, and then to a Romanian town known to harbor cyberscammers.

The Romanian townsfolk assume Loretta is an American tourist as she goes about her investigation. Loretta's skills - like driving a stick shift, riding a motorcycle, and befriending people - serve her well in her quest.



In the Romanian town, Loretta happens to make the acquaintance of two teenage boys, Dinu and Romeo, who - unknown to Loretta - are involved in the cyberthief scam.



The boys work for Dinu's Uncle Dragomir, a thug who runs the operation, bullies the boys, and pays them a pittance.



As the story unfolds, Loretta's serendipitous discoveries lead to danger and adventure. On the upside, Loretta meets some helpful people, and gets to enjoy Romanian specialties like Țuică (plum brandy) and plum jam.





Loretta is a plucky heroine with a good sense of humor, and it's great to see her hold her own in this 'cozy thriller.'

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Petrea Burchard, who does an excellent job.

Thanks to Netgalley, Spencer Quinn, and Macmillan Audio for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars