Customer Reviews

Dangerous Admissions: Secrets of a Closet Sleuth

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Forty-three years Miranda "Rannie" Bookman is a divorced mother of two. Her love life consists of imaginary numbers and her work as a copyeditor with a sharpened blue pencil went down the tubes due to an honest error of omitting the letter l in the re-release of the Nancy Drew thriller The Secret of the Old Clock.

Until the publishing world forgives her blunder, which may be in the next millennium, Rannie works where she can; for instance she embarrasses her children by giving tours at Manhattan's exclusive Chapel School private academy they attend. When someone murders the director of college admissions at "Chaps", A. Lawrence Tutwiler, her son Nate and other seniors and their parents including her are prime suspects. Unable to accept the NYPD narrow focus targeting the Upper West Side Chaps community, Rannie thinks she would like to kill authors whose books are one big run on sentence, but never did. Instead she investigates whether anyone would kill to get into their college of first choice or is some other motive the cause.

Eccentric Rannie is a charmer as she holds this amusing Manhattan murder mystery together as she cringes at fractured sentence structure or insuring the world is grammatically and punctuality correct while investigating who is killing Chaps. The breezy story line pokes fun at elitist schools, publishing companies, and amateur sleuths. The support cast, mostly the Chaps, add depth to Rannie's running amok as the investigative grammar queen of New York.

Harriet Klausner

Terrific fun! A witty and grammatically correct mystery. The author certainly knows the New York private school scene, the Upper West Side and the voice of teenage angst. I look forward to Rannie's next outing

A forcibly unemployed copy editor is working at a fancy Manhattan school where the parents are so focused on getting their children into the right colleges that they will kill for it. The influential college advisor is murdered.
It's so full of wonderful laugh-out-loud one liners that I though it was going to be simply played for laughs but there's an engrossing page-turning classical whodunit that obeys the conventions while satirizing them. Even the climactic attractive-heroine-in-peril scene brings in a joke about copy-editing.
I refrain from repeating the wonderful Nancy Drew joke.

This book kept me reading far too late one night, but I couldn't stop. The humor is dead-on, the pace is brisk, and O'Connor's insights into the publishing industry and the world of prep schools lend a welcome authenticity. I can guess the resolution of the mystery in a book or film about half the time, but I didn't guess the ending of this one.

If you're a reader like me who enjoys clever dialog, twists and turns, and a solid mystery plot, don't miss this book.

Highly recommended!

Haven't found a good book for the back-to-school madness yet? Well, DANGEROUS ADMISSIONS is a fun, fast-paced, adventure that fits the bill.

There are a few reasons why I am touting this book--but mostly it is because the main character Miranda "Rannie" Bookman was so down to earth. And funny. And not for one iota attempting to become an crime investigator. In fact, she completely falls into this role in the book because she is a mother that is trying to protect her son. It makes for a fantastic believeable read that you really shouldn't miss.

Beyond Rannie, there are a whole cast of loveable characters. Particularly her son Nate, the girl of his dreams Olivia and then some "popular" but viscious high school friends The Lilies (Lily B. and Lily G) and Elliot (think Heathers and you'll get their sarcastic wit). Jane completely grabbed their adolescence and ran with it. In fact, I grew up in an area far from New York City but, the insecurities of that age are universal and Jane didn't miss one of them. Even with the teenagers in families that have a bit of money to throw around.

And again, Rannie. I love her. Not only is she believable in the role as of mother, well, she's a person. With a past. And it haunts her and we, as readers, believe every ounce of it. And I mean not only her divorce, but sex life. And she doesn't hide her premiscuous past. That being said, there is a steamy love interest, definitely some spicy sces, and a reunion of sorts with an ex-husband. How fun is that?

Honsetly, I loved the book. It was fun, funky, believeable and had so many plot twists and turns... well, it kept me reading for two whole days.

This is a wonderful read. It has everything I look for in a novel. The plot is ingenious, the characters well filled out, and it displays a delicious and perverse sense of humor. I was especially impressed with the lives of the teens--they suffer appropriately, they triumph occasionally, and most of them are likeable. The copy-editor mum cum detective and the murder victim become more and more interesting and sympathetic as the novel progresses. I join the other critics in hoping for a sequel.

This was the perfect book to read on a lazy and humid Sunday afternoon. I read it straight through. The plot was a little predictable but O'Connor writes so well from the perspectives of the different characters it didn't matter. She paced her action well by interspersing text messages and emails. Very enjoyable -- hope she will write more adult fiction.

Private schools can be deadly business.

I learned that last year when I wrote an article about the increasing numbers of parents who try to get their kids into private preschools and elementary schools so they'll have a 'leg up' when it comes to high school and college.

While many parents aren't going to say it outright, the competition to get a slot at the "right" preschool can be murder!

But not premeditated murder!

Author Jane O' Connor, better known for her Fancy Nancy children's books, has come up with a fast and fun read about the deadly serious business of Manhattan private schools and the dead-serious competition to get into the "right" colleges called Dangerous Admissions: Secrets of a Closet Sleuth.

Set against the backdrop of the tony, but fictional, Chapel School in Upper Manhattan, 40-something mother and editor Rannie Bookman finds herself at the middle of a murder investigation when A. Lawrence Tutwiler, the octogenarian college admissions adviser to the school, is found dead in his office.

Rannie had just visited his office hours before his murder when he offered her her first taste of single malt scotch.

Rannie's son had also stopped by to see "Tut" for a quick chat the evening of his demise.

And so the tension starts off pretty quickly as everyone tries to pin down a suspect, especially since a serial murderer has been terrorizing that same neighborhood in recent weeks. Could it be Rannie? Or her son? Or the ex-girlfriend? Or the catty co-eds?

What makes Rannie appealing as a character is that she is not the stereotypical Manhattan private school mother -- and the other parents and faculty don't let her forget it. It seems that Rannie's big publishing career came to a screeching halt because she left out the lower case "l" in the last word of the title of the classic Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret Of the Old Clock.

(When you're done snorting that Diet Coke out your nose, I'll continue!)

So in the eyes of most of the elite parents, Rannie is already suspect before they find Tut face down on his office desk.

What made this book appealing for me was the character of Rannie -- the one down-to-earth Chapel School parent portrayed in the book -- a harried working single mom, struggling to keep some semblance of a normal life for her kids. Many of the other adult characters were a bit stereotypical for me, but given that the plot itself was a leap of faith, I went with it.

Dangerous Admissions is written in an on-the-edge-of-your-seat style that makes you want to stay up past your bedtime to get in one more chapter to see what the next twist will be and who will try to point the fingers at others and away from themselves!

And who did kill poor "Tut" in that cut-throat world of Chapel School? Like you really think I'm going to tell you?!?!

This was funny, with a good story. A good beach, bed, or subway read. Really entertaining.

This is a fabulous book--it captures the nuance of class on both of the "Uppers" (which I have experienced first-hand) as well as capturing the unique atmosphere of daily life at a private school. Best of all, though, were the wonderful descriptions of single parening young adult children, the challenges of dating, and, last but not least, the cultural divide between WASP and other. A total hit! I can't wait for more!