Robin Hudson had a promising career as a TV journalist, but blew it
with some public embarrassment. Now her ex-husband has a younger and
prettier fiancée, her job for not-CNN involves investigating a sperm
bank, and she's about to be blackmailed. Then the blackmailer turns up
dead…
This is not a conventional mystery; as in Janet Evanovich's
apparently-endless Stephanie Plum series, there's lots of stuff going
on that's not plot-relevant. These diversions and fireworks
effectively distracted me from the search for the murderer, which I
count as a win for the author. If you're looking for a strictly
rule-following mystery, however, go elsewhere; counted solely by clue
presence, the pace is pretty slow, because of all the other things
that are going on.
Unlike Stephanie Plum, Robin Hudson is competent: maybe not the
wonder-reporter she thinks she could be, and certainly no good in the
field of personal relationships, but she's basically decent at her
job. You will have to take her as she is in order to enjoy the book,
mind; she's self-interested, perhaps even self-absorbed, and prone to
minor casual attacks on co-workers she doesn't like. One just has to
roll with it.
Hayter was a TV journalist before she took up writing, and is clearly
using her own experiences as background information. There's no
tedious messing around explaining how a TV news studio works: we know,
or we can pick it up as we go along. I imagine someone who knew more
about the early history of CNN would see more parallels with the "ANN"
that's Robin's employer. It's not perhaps quite as fascinating as
Hayter thinks it is, but it's still enjoyable. There are rather too
many characters; admittedly they all get their potted background (and
are probably drawn from the life), but from the perspective of a
modern novel the cast's about twice as big as it should be.
In part this book is fascinating as a look back into a world where TV
news was still nearly as important as it thought it was. (It's also
apparently one of the defining works of the subgenre known as
Tart Noir.)
Followed by Nice Girls Finish Last.
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