Dead Clever: A Lily Pascale Mystery (Lily Pascale Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Scarlett Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 2002 | Series: Lily Pascale Mysteries

Lily Pascale is the hippest new heroine to come from London since Bridget Jones.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British author Thomas (Going Out) puts a hip spin on the English cozy in this engaging mystery (the first of a trilogy), full of attractive characters in a lovingly evoked setting. Bored and unsuccessful at teaching, bartending and acting, Lily Pascale leaves noisy, noisome London and her cheating boyfriend for her native picturesque Devon. When she applies for an English department vacancy at the local university, Lily is, to her amazement, hired on the spot to teach her specialties-crime and horror fiction as well as creative writing. But the campus is in turmoil. A student has recently been decapitated in the woods, another student is missing, a colleague to whom Lily is attracted disappears and Lily's department head, Professor Valentine, is oddly uncommunicative. When the distraught missing student surfaces, Lily is the last person to see him before he turns up dead, supposedly a suicide. Lily suspects foul play and resolves to investigate. When she discovers an insidious drug cult on campus with a sinister leader, what was hitherto a tale of amateur detection becomes a Sax Rohmer-type thriller. The leader's identity and who's behind the murders may be a little too obvious for some, but everyone will welcome the sassy, self-reliant and smart Lily to the ranks of independent, contemporary female sleuths.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A very appealing character." -- The Denver Post, February 2, 2003

"Lily will appeal to mystery fans who like their English detectives a bit more modern and trendy than Miss Marple." -- Library Journal, January 3, 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Justin, Charles & Co.; 1 edition (December 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932112014
• ISBN-13: 978-1932112016
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,626,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. Her other novels include Bright Young Things, Going Out, PopCo and The End of Mr.Y, which was longlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars smart and witty, February 20, 2003

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Clever: A Lily Pascale Mystery (Lily Pascale Mysteries) (Hardcover)

This first of three Lily Pascale mysteries is (how can I resist?) dead clever. Young Lily leaves her cheating boyfriend and dead-end London bartending job for some R and R in her small hometown in Devon where she promptly lands the perfect part-time job teaching crime fiction at the local university. Except one of her students has been gruesomely murdered. And some of the others are acting peculiar. And her new romantic interest comes under suspicion. Then the student who saw the whole thing (as we know, but Lily doesn't) seems to be going crazy.

Lily begins asking questions and before she knows it, she's investigating, withholding evidence and generally digging a deep hole she's only going to climb out of by solving the crime, a murder or two and a few close calls later. The plot gets a little wobbly but keeps moving, the characters are well drawn, the setting is lovingly rendered and the writing is crisp, fast-paced and humorous - though not quite as smart as it starts out to be. A promising beginning for a hip young protagonist.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hip and clever!, November 5, 2006

By 

Ahniwa D. Ferrari "librarian" (Olympia, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dead Clever: A Lily Pascale Mystery (Lily Pascale Mysteries) (Paperback)

Scarlett Thomas has a very clear, enjoyable writing style that lends itself well to the mystery genre. Her characters are interesting and complicated, her stories are tricky (in the end), but easy to follow. A joy from start to finish and recommended even to those who don't usually dip into the mystery genre, as I myself do not, except for this series.

I've read almost all of Thomas's oeuvre (everything except "Mr. Y"), and I'd recommend any of them to anybody. I just find her books straight-out enjoyable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dead boring!, December 31, 2008

By 

still searching (MK UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Clever: A Lily Pascale Mystery (Lily Pascale Mysteries) (Paperback)

Quite ironic really considering the title of this distinctly routine piece; it wasn't dead clever to publish this and it must be wondered if Thomas regrets it now considering the outstanding Popco and The End of Mr Y rather like some actors have regretted appearing in certain films at the start of their careers. Let me put it this way, thank God I read The End of Mr Y first; if Dead Clever had been my introduction to Thomas' work it would have been my first and last. I won't bother giving yet another synopsis of the story, such as it is. Suffice to say that she does the English higher education system no favours at all: I mean can you really phone up, have a 2 minute chat and get a lectureship in a UK university and on the strength of a few weeks part time work, during which you do virtually no preparation, very little real teaching, no marking, give no tutorials and spend most of your time sleuthing around the `Devon drug scene', be rewarded by being made head of department?

Do yourselves a favour - skip this lightweight fluff and move straight on to either of the later novels. And to think some reviewers found it `brilliant'; the mind really does boggle!