The Last Manly Man

There is a great deal of pleasure to be derived from hectic absurdity even when it is wrapped around a knowingly noir sensibility. From the absurd premise that a scientist working on a deranged criminal project would sew his secrets into a hat and then present them to his heroine to the wild denouement at a feminist conference, Hayter's deft silliness kept me reading like a man obsessed. I finished the book at a single sitting because I could find no appropriate break in which to set it down. Slight and silly it may be but it is the most enormous fun.

I like Sparkle Hayter, everything from her name to her cheeky, irrepressible, slightly NSFW writing. I adored "Nice Girls Finish Last" and snickered through "what's a girl gotta do".
Have to admit this wasn't my favourite, though. The plot was beyond silly and I couldn't keep focused on it, despite the fun writing.
Looking forward to he next one....

I had read the first three books of this series quite a long time ago. I'm not sure why this fourth book ended up stuck in my TBR pile for so long, nor why I never picked up the fifth.

Reporter Robin Hudson begins this story in a great place--she's been made the head of Special Reports at the All News Network, and her love life is looking up. Then she encounters an apparently disoriented man in a hat. The man hands her his hat and makes a couple of nonsensical statements before he's whisked away by a couple of men in a limo.

When an unidentified body turns up, she's sure it must be the man in the hat. Suddenly, everything seems to be going wrong. Her division is on the line, and Robin needs a story bigger than the Man of the Future series show more she's been working on to save it. And she suspects she's--again--in the middle of a murder case.

The more she investigates, the more complicated things get, what with militant environmental activists, missing bonobo chimps, extremists in the war between the sexes, and somebody seems to be out to get her for something she hasn't even done.

The story is full of twists and turns and a lot of humor. I think I'll have to look for The Chelsea Girl Murders. show less