Saturday, February 26, 2011

What Are Friends For?-Caroline Taylor

What Are Friends For?
Caroline Taylor
Five Star, Apr 6 2011, $25.95
ISBN 978159414956

In Annapolis, Maryland, Persephone Justinalia "P.J." Smythe works for her Uncle Alexander as a skip tracer at his loan business. When her best friend Alicia Todd Ritchie asks P.J. to participle in a documentary she is filming on the private investigative business, she agrees though she is not a hard boiled sleuth.

Wetlands Protectors Alliance Vivian Remington the amazon hires petit P.J. as a sleuth to uncover evidence that Florida state senator Marguerite Sutherland stole an ocelot fur coat. Vivian needs the endangered species coat to return it to the Fish and Wildlife Service who lent it to her. However, when Vivian dies from a heroin overdose that the cops believe was a murder, they suspect P.J. Struggling to prove her innocence by finding the killer and that the politician lifted the coat, P.J. also skirmishes with her ex-husband Bobby Crane; former college classmate Gareth Swenson, and lawyer Neal Patterson.

These entertaining hard-boiled-lit lampoons the detective genre as P.J. seems to step into more manure than a stable produces. Over the top of the head of her first client, fans will enjoy the somewhat formulaic whodunit while laughing throughout starting from the moment P.J. pretends to be a sleuth sizing down to her eye level Vivian.

Harriet Klausner

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