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Bezig met laden... What's A Girl Gotta Do? (origineel 1994; editie 1995)door Sparkle Hayter (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkWhat's A Girl Gotta Do door Sparkle Hayter (1994)
Best Beach Reads (75) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. This was a fun, relatively light read--I gave it an immediate 4 stars as I indeed "really liked it," but as it hasn't quite stayed with me (as I think a 4-starrer should) I've since downgraded it to "liked it" which I can stand by. Cosy, but not too cosy, some fun characters, very chick-lit as far as mysteries go, and I'd be perfectly happy to read another one in the series... but haven't, because I'm devouring the Dandy Gilver series which are more to my taste. Wise-cracking amateur gumshoe reporter Robin Hudson is on the chase for a killer before he strikes again. The thing is, I still sort of believed in love. I was kind of agnostic about love, actually, but I hadn’t lost all hope completely. I was waiting for the feminist wet dream, Spencer Tracy. And while I was waiting, great looks and a great bod could tide me over nicely. -Sparkle Hayter (What’s a Girl To Do p 70) In fact, I am a slob. I admit it. It’s not that I’m a lazy person. I tend to workaholism and when I do clean, I clean compulsively, unable to stop until the place is completely spotless. But housework just seems so insignificant and, as men have always known, there’s always something better to do. I haven’t read Moby Dick yet. I haven’t seen Fellini’s Satyricon. There are dozens of countries in the world about which I know nothing and billions of people I haven’t yet met. -Sparkle Hayter (What’s a Girl To Do p 139) There is Murphy’s Law and there are Robin’s Amendments. Number one. The guy with the biggest tub of popcorn and nosiest eating habits will always sit directly behind me in a movie theater (or else a hearing-impaired foreign national with his translator, so that every line of on-screen dialogue is repeated in loud German). Number two. The amount a man adores me is roughly equal to the number of his faults. Number three. When I’m already running late, something will inevitably happen to make me even later. -Sparkle Hayter (What’s a Girl To Do p 145-6) Burke, after surveying my umbrella, my poison ivy, and my spray colon spiked with cayenne pepper, once asked me if there was anything that couldn’t be a weapon if it fell into my hands. The only thing I could think of was Jell-O. “To you the world is just full of weapons, isn’t it?” he said. Yep, and the world is just full of reasons to use them, I thought now, as I left the store, prepared in my heart to bludgeon a man to death with a coffee can if necessary. -Sparkle Hayter (What’s a Girl To Do p 200) My friend insisted that I read this book quite some time ago... I bought it right away, but then it just kind of sat around. It really shouldn't have taken me this long to get around to taking her advice! It's a light-hearted, humorous murder mystery... but I have to admit that, for me, what really made it shine wasn't the plot but its spot-on depiction of the New York City that I moved to. The book was published in 1994 and set shortly before then. The main character, Robin Hudson, lives in the East Village and works as a struggling reporter [the recommending friend and I both lived in the same neighborhood and worked in the media field at that time as well...] Robin's a bit older than I was at the time - but that just means that I think I actually enjoyed it more, reading it now, than I would have if I'd found it when it first came out. When we're introduced to Robin, she's admittedly at a low point. Her husband has just left her for a younger woman. She's made two embarrassing gaffes at work that mean she's been demoted from high-profile journalism to Special Reports (in one case, this mean going undercover for an expose of a sperm bank). And to top it all off, she's now been contacted by a mysterious caller who seems to have blackmail in mind. But when the potential blackmailer turns up dead at her office costume party ("dress as your favorite news story" [ah, for the days when tasteless Halloween costumes were de rigueur!]), suddenly Robin's no longer the one reporting the news; she's the one in the news - as a murder suspect. Will she be able to clear her name and find out who's behind the plot? As I said - it needs to be read to truly realize how funny the book is. It's just got so many devastatingly accurate details, all delivered with wit. I found the attitude refreshing - and as sparkling as the author's name... like reading a glass of bubbly. It also made me really nostalgic for a whole social milieu that just isn't there any more... yeah, there were crappy parts of that time period, but in a way, it was mine... so yeah, definitely going to go ahead and find the other books in this series. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Robin Hudson (1)
Fiction.
Mystery.
Humor (Fiction.)
HTML: Winner of the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for best first mystery novel: Called "flat-out funny" and "audacious" by Publishers Weekly, this is the first novel in Sparkle Hayter's comic mystery series featuring sexy, irreverent TV reporter and amateur sleuth Robin Hudson Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I tag this book cozy, but it isn't. It's a murder mystery with a strong female character, edgy situations and language, but nothing explicitly violent or graphic. Robin Hudson is a "rumpled Rita Hayworth" in looks, but still easily a woman other women can identify with; she balances competence with anxiety and an intimidating defensiveness with a genuine desire to do the right thing and be a nice person. She grows poison ivy around all her windows and on top of all her valuables so if she's robbed, the police can identify the culprit by the rash they'll be sporting. Robin is a great heroine.
Set in a gritty, 1980's NYC that feels incredibly authentic, the mystery is really well done. Plenty of suspects and no telegraphing of the villain. At least one red herring. This is a slower paced mystery than most of the ones I read today; I have cozies that have more "action" but the pace doesn't lag and the author knows and shares enough about the TV news industry that I never felt impatient to move the story along.
This is the first of 5 books in the Robin Hudson series and I'm glad I kept these on the shelf; I enjoyed this second read at least as much as I enjoyed it the first time and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a mystery that's just this side of cozy. ( )