NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Sean Runnette’s low-key storytelling style suits the wry finesse of Handler’s unlikely sleuth, Stewart Hoag—an author whose bucolic haven is shattered first by blackmail and then by a decapitated rooster and a bludgeoned actor. When the murder puts the kibosh on Act 2 of a performance designed to rescue a classic village theater filled with hundreds of East and West Coast celebs, Runnette’s shift from his mild character into Katharine Hepburn mimicry is a delight. The reflections of the New York City author working with the country cops are conveyed with wit and compassion by Runnette, who seems to revel in the Handler’s sleight-of-tongue style. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
05/14/2018
In Edgar-winner Handler’s delightful 10th Stewart Hoag mystery (after 2017’s The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes), Hollywood ghostwriter and novelist Stewart joins his ex-wife, actress Merilee Nash, at her farm in Lyme, Conn. While Stewart writes in the farm’s guest cottage, Merilee is focused on the upcoming one-night performance to save the decrepit Sherbourne Playhouse, where she’s playing the female lead in Noël Coward’s Private Lives. It’s 1993, and the many celebrities from New York attending the benefit show include Jackie O and her “dark and handsome son,” who Stewart believes “should have just become the next Tom Selleck instead of trying to be an assistant Manhattan D.A.” When, during the play’s intermission, the male lead is found in the men’s room with his head bashed in, Stewart once again turns sleuth. He must also deal with a failed actor who’s blackmailing Merilee. Fans of light period mysteries full of famous names will be enchanted. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
If not for David Handler, I wouldn’t be a writer. He’s one of my very favorites: a novelist whose champagne-fizzy mysteries—as winning as the madcap adventures of Carl Hiaasen, as hilarious as Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series—tickle the brain, heart, and funny bone in equal measure.” — A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
“Hoagy is a thoroughly engaging amateur sleuth, as appealing to readers as he is enraging to the authorities, who can’t abide his unconventional methods. This tenth installment in the series is pure pleasure.” — Booklist (starred review)
“As usual, Hoagy’s narration is the bright spot in a tangle of intrigue wilder than Noel Coward ever could have imagined.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Fans of light period mysteries full of famous names will be enchanted.” — Publishers Weekly
“Hoagy and Lulu tickle your funnybone and touch your heart.” — Carolyn Hart
”One of my all-time favorite series! …David Handler is so good at writing one smart, funny page-turner after another that he makes it look easy.” — Harlan Coben
”David Handler is the master of the sly, comedic mystery.” — Adriana Trigiani
Carolyn Hart
Hoagy and Lulu tickle your funnybone and touch your heart.
A.J. Finn
If not for David Handler, I wouldn’t be a writer. He’s one of my very favorites: a novelist whose champagne-fizzy mysteries—as winning as the madcap adventures of Carl Hiaasen, as hilarious as Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series—tickle the brain, heart, and funny bone in equal measure.
Adriana Trigiani
”David Handler is the master of the sly, comedic mystery.
Harlan Coben
”One of my all-time favorite series! …David Handler is so good at writing one smart, funny page-turner after another that he makes it look easy.
Booklist (starred review)
Hoagy is a thoroughly engaging amateur sleuth, as appealing to readers as he is enraging to the authorities, who can’t abide his unconventional methods. This tenth installment in the series is pure pleasure.”
NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Sean Runnette’s low-key storytelling style suits the wry finesse of Handler’s unlikely sleuth, Stewart Hoag—an author whose bucolic haven is shattered first by blackmail and then by a decapitated rooster and a bludgeoned actor. When the murder puts the kibosh on Act 2 of a performance designed to rescue a classic village theater filled with hundreds of East and West Coast celebs, Runnette’s shift from his mild character into Katharine Hepburn mimicry is a delight. The reflections of the New York City author working with the country cops are conveyed with wit and compassion by Runnette, who seems to revel in the Handler’s sleight-of-tongue style. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-05-15
Summer 1993 finds sometime novelist Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag back at work on a new book, happily resident on his ex-wife Merilee Nash's Connecticut farm, but unable to kick his fatal attraction toward inconvenient corpses in awkward places.While Hoagy types furiously, Merilee's taking time out from her Hollywood career to organize a fundraiser on behalf of the storied Sherbourne Playhouse. The weather forecast for the one-night-only benefit staging of Private Lives is dire, but that doesn't deter Merilee or her co-stars—hunky Greg Farber, his wife, Dini Hawes, and womanizing Marty Miller—from learning their lines and mastering Noel Coward's comic rhythms. Another dark cloud appears on the horizon when R.J. Romero, a Yale drama classmate who shares a nasty secret with Merilee, pops up like a jack-in-the-box to blackmail her. But the show must go on despite predictions of torrential rain, high winds, and umbrellas galore for both the audience and the stars, though the weather is far from the worst complication in store. The first act goes off without a hitch, but during the intermission, to the surprise of everyone but fans of the series (The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, 2017, etc.), the cast loses one of its leading lights to a killer, and as if on cue, skeletons begin tumbling from closets, revealing the past histories of everyone involved to be even more checkered than the sexual adventures of Coward's principals. Accompanied by Lulu, his faithful basset hound, Hoagy sidles into sleuthing alongside Lt. Carmine Tedone of the Connecticut State Police. Although he acts on several hunches he coyly declines to share with the reader and drags the cast through an interminable restaging of the crime, he gets to share detecting honors with Lulu.Familiar premise, busy plotting, stock characters. As usual, Hoagy's narration is the bright spot in a tangle of intrigue wilder than Noel Coward ever could have imagined.
