Description
New York City, 1943. Almost anything in pants has gone to serve Uncle Sam in the war–including Woody Mason, the head of a detective agency in midtown Manhattan. Left to run the show is his secretary, Faye Quick. She’s got moxie–which she’ll need when she stumbles over a dead girl in the street and takes on her first murder case. The victim, Claudette West, was a student at NYU and the daughter of a Park Avenue family. Claudette’s father is convinced greed was the motive, and that Claudette’s working-class boyfriend, Richard Cotten, killed the girl because she threw him off the gravy train. Faye, however, isn’t so sure, not when she learns about all the other men Claudette was secretly seeing–from her lecherous literature professor to an apparent con artist. For Faye, there are more shocking surprises in store than turns and dips in the Coney Island Cyclone.

This was a solid story about Faye as a very straightforward and no-nonsense PI and how she goes around checking on everyone and everything involved with the victim. The feel of the 1940s came through with popular jargon of the 40s used throughout along with mentions of the war, the music and other things popular at the time. I thought Faye was likable, believable and persistent in finding out what happened. I liked the book and would read more by this author. ( )

It's WWII and the secretary has to take over the Detective Agency. Faye talks like Sam Spade and she gets the job done by asking lots of questions. She's hired to find the murderer of a wealthy society woman while uncovering a phoney Rockefeller that the victim was using to keep her parents in the dark. She solves the crime with the help of her secretary, her next door neighbor, a friend who's a cop while keeping her gun on the shelf in the closet. ( )

I really ended up liking this book. The mystery was good, the main character pulled me in, and I loved the historical tidbits here and there. ( )

I just couldn't finish it, so maybe I shouldn't be writing a review. I wanted to like it, and I thought it had an interesting premise, but the dialog drove me insane. What was the author thinking? ( )