booklog 2015 – 2) Gemma Halliday – Spying in High Heels

Chicklit mystery set in Los Angeles. Maddie Springer is a young fashion designer who tries to track down her lawyer boyfriend when he goes missing, and finds herself in the middle of embezzlement and murder. I nearly stopped reading on the first page, wherein Maddie describes her behaviour on the freeway when she’s late for a meeting with her boyfriend. Almost causing an accident by cutting into lanes and doing her make-up in the mirror at high speed was presumably supposed to make her look adorably ditzy, but I simply found it loathsome. I did keep reading, but it coloured my view of the character for the rest of the book.

It’s an odd one for me. The mystery plot was enjoyable if predictable, and there were things I liked a lot, with some good supporting characters; but it was hard work getting to the end and if it had been a paper edition I would have probably been high-speed skim-reading. No more than a two star for me and I’m not inclined to try anything else by this author, even if I can see why other people were bowled over by it.

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ARe

Book review: Ally O’Brien — The Agency

Note: I received an ARC of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme.

Tess Drake is a high-flying literary agent on the staff of a top entertainment agency. Sufficiently high-flying that she wants to branch out on her own, rather than continue to take a salary that’s a fraction of the money she brings into the business. As the novel opens, she’s just been given one final push in that direction by the death of her boss. Tess liked Lowell; she loathes Cosima, the woman who’s about to take over, and the feeling’s mutual.

The problem for Tess is that she’s made more enemies than just Cosima along the way to success. She’s left frantically trying to put together her new business without letting slip what she’s doing, in the middle of the uproar generated by Lowell’s death from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Oh, and then there’s the police investigation into the suggestion that Lowell’s death wasn’t an accident, and that Tess might have had something to do with it.

It’s fast, funny, and more than a little over the top. It’s also unashamedly for an adult audience, as is obvious right from the first page. There is swearing and there is sex, and most of it is there for genuine plot and character development reasons. There’s also a lot of acidly funny commentary on the entertainment business, with much dropping of real names to add to the realism.

Tess is often unlikeable, but she’s also aware of her flaws, and there’s real growth in her character during the book. She’s also fiercely loyal to a few people for more than commercial reasons, and genuinely regrets the damage she’s accidentally caused to relationships she valued.

The book’s a blend of chick-lit and mystery, and does a good job of both, but is not going to appeal to everyone. I can see why the reviews on LibraryThing range from loathing to loving it. For me personally it was a page-turner, and while I sometimes wanted to shake some sense into Tess, by the last few chapters I very much wanted her to break free of the trap that had been laid for her. The novel is complete in itself and does have a satisfying ending, but I’d love to see what happened next. I’d gladly read a sequel to this book.

LibraryThing entry
ISBN: 978-0312379445 (hardback)

ETA: Amazon and Audible.com links deleted. See this post on my main blog about Amazon’s censorship of LGBT books for why.