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McKenna investigates the first casualty in a New York literary war The romance boom has ended, and the women who made fortunes writing bodice-rippers are now scribbling mysteries instead. When the genre's "true" authors fight back, a battle breaks out in every high-class gin joint in Manhattan. It is take-no-prisoners fighting, and Patience McKenna is caught in the middle. This ex-romance author has just turned to true crime writing when Sarah English comes to visit. A would-be romance show more writer from the Great Plains, English is dowdy, wide-eyed, and naïve--but she is about to toughen up. When a fading romance writer gets pushed in front of a subway train, English is among the suspects. To prove her new friend innocent, McKenna will need the skills gleaned in both her literary genres. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Outrageously fun look at the inside world of book publishing.
Told in first person by heroine Patience McKenna.
(Goodreads) Midlist mystery and romance writers are outraged when quite a few romance authors turn to the new hybrid of Romantic Suspense. Is this grounds for murder? When the newly minted romantic suspense writer Verna Train lands on the subway tracks, Patience McKenna, romance novelist-turned-true crime writer, is in the ideal field to investigate.
Told in first person by heroine Patience McKenna.
(Goodreads) Midlist mystery and romance writers are outraged when quite a few romance authors turn to the new hybrid of Romantic Suspense. Is this grounds for murder? When the newly minted romantic suspense writer Verna Train lands on the subway tracks, Patience McKenna, romance novelist-turned-true crime writer, is in the ideal field to investigate.
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Author Information
45+ Works 4,858 Members
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1986
- People/Characters
- Patience 'Pay' Campbell McKenna (writer); Sarah English (new romantic suspense writer); Phoebe Dameraux (Phoebe Weiss, Pay's BFF, romance writer); Karen Palmer (one of the owners of Bogie's restaurant); Max Brady (Maxwell Arthur Brady, hard-boiled mystery writer); Verna Train (romance writer) (show all 20); Amelia Samson (Joan Wroth, rich category romance 'writer'); Marilou Saunders (talk show hostess); Dana Morton (Pay and Sarah's agent); Caroline Dooley (Sarah's editor); William DeAndrea (two-time Edgar winner mystery writer); Billy Palmer (one of the owners of Bogie's restaurant); Camille (Pay's black female cat); Nick Carras (lawyer, Pay's boyfriend); Jerry O'Reilly (police officer); Raddford Hugh Stassen (P. I. hired by Max Brady's ex-wife); Tony Marsh (homicide detective); Cassie Arbeth (Sarah English's neighbor); Adrienne English (Sarah's young daughter); John Robert Train (Vera's ex-husband)
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Holbrook, Connecticut, USA (fictional)
- First words
- Everybody who comes to New York from somewhere else and does reasonably well at something nobody has any right to expect to do reasonably well at wants to show off.
- Quotations
- In the past two years I have spent all my time either involved in murders or writing about them. When I return from vacations, my mailbox is full of fan letters enclosing 'something extra.' In the past six months I have rec... (show all)eived a complete set of press clippings on the DeQuincy, Iowa, disembowelment murders; four sharp knives; a photo essay (amateur -- Kodak snapshots pasted to typing paper) on an autopsy; and a detailed plan for the assassination of Claude Rains, who is already dead. That was what I was getting before the book came out, when I was just a picture and a name in newspaper stories. Once the book came out, I stopped opening fan mail, got a telephone number so unlisted even AT&T doesn't know what it is, and started handing over any packages left on my doorstop to the bomb squad. (chapter six)
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)After all that, buying a kid eighty-dollar sneakers actually seemed sane.
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- Members
- 71
- Popularity
- 440,769
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.83)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 2
