Midlist mystery and romance writers are outraged when quite a few romance authors, in a declining market for their own genre, turn to the new hybrid of Romantic Suspense - a move that takes the New York literary world by storm and sends mystery and romance sales plummeting. Is this grounds for murder? When the newly minted romantic suspense writer Verna Train lands on the subway tracks just ahead of the Lexington Avenue Local, Patience McKenna, romance novelist-turned-true crime writer, is in the ideal field to investigate.
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"The writing is breezy and marked by deft turns of phrase." -- New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Jane Haddam, whose pen name is Orania Papazoglou, has written over 20 mysteries and is a regular contributor to magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Family Circle, and Parents. She lives in Watertown, Connecticut.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Romance vs Suspense,
This review is from: Death's Savage Passion (A Patience McKenna Mystery) (Paperback)
This is the third of Papazoglou's "Pay McKenna" mysteries. The others are, in order, WICKED, LOVING MURDER, WICKED, LOVING MURDER, RICH, RADIANT SLAUGHTER and ONCE AND ALWAYS MURDER. They can be read in any order, but there's a slight edge to reading them in order if you can.
The central character is a Manhattan-based writer from Old Money New England, so the story takes place largely in Manhattan, and most of the characters are freelance writers or allied trades--editors, publicity--with tension (apart from mere murder) provided by the conflicting interests of romance, mystery and romantic suspense. It's a standard mystery, with the usual run of trappings--poison, a missing body and an impossible crime. All the McKennas are amusing, and this one exceeds itself with the creation of Max Brady, a bad imitator of Mickey Spillane, and author of MY ROD IS HOT. I first read this one about 20 years ago, and still think of Max whenever I run into bad hard-boiled. Definitely worth buying. Where to go from here: There are two other non-series Papazoglou titles, CHARISMA and SANCTITY, which I would rate a nearer suspense than mystery. More recently, under the pen name "Jane Haddam" the same author has done the "Gregor Demarkian" mysteries.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious,
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This review is from: Death's Savage Passion (A Patience McKenna Mystery) (Paperback)
I checked the books in this mystery series out one by one from the city library when I was in college about 20 years ago. A few weeks ago I decided to track them down one by one from used book sellers. This, the middle of a six book series, is one of the funniest, a mercilessly accurate look at a certain era in the romance and mystery industries and the various characters who wrote them. I recognized a certain well-known romance writer in the character Amelia, the chainsmoking septegenarian with a mind like a steel trap and a stable of secretaries who use her outlines to ghostwrite Jane Eyre rip-offs that vary from the formula not at all, despite being set in 1980s Britain or America. There's a running gag about how every romantic suspense novel cover features a heroine running from danger in an off the shoulder peasant blouse and four-inch heels. Then there's short, wimpy Max, author of the hard-boiled "My Rod is Hot" and secret romance novel writer. Priceless.
Pay McKenna, the heroine of the piece, is a 30-something romance novelist turned true crime author and amateur detective. She's a New England blue blood whose old boarding school friends think she's a touch odd for not settling down with a nice stockbroker and raising money for the American Cancer Society. Unconsciously wanting someone to admire her, she decides to help out struggling first-time romantic suspense novelist Sarah and ends up stumbling into another murder and getting a whole lot else more than she had bargained for. The mystery itself moves along snappily, with plenty of laughs, most from Pay's acid wit. The book holds up well after 26 years, though the references to typewriters, word processors, VCRs, the Cold War, and millennium are a bit jarring in this age of Nooks and Kindles and laptops and cell phones, etc. My, how the publishing industry has changed and my, how it hasn't.
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