The One That Got Away: An Emma Price Mystery (Emma Price Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Naomi Rand (Author)

Book Description

Series: Emma Price Mysteries | Publication Date: July 31, 2001

It may be the hottest summer in New York history, but for forty-year-old Brooklynite Emma Price, the heat is only starting to rise. After a dozen years, her husband is bailing on their marriage. To complicate matters, she's pregnant again. The her longtime babysitter drowns, a mystery that inexorably draws legal investigator into its tangled web. Together with her on-again, off-again ally, Detective Laurence Solomon, Emma will try to solve this puzzle in time to catch a killer -- a hunt that will take her deep into the crevices of her own life, and lead her to question many of the assumptions she's made about those she trusts and loves.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rand's debut novel billed as the start of a series is an occasionally diverting but also disturbing tale about a 40-year-old investigator who happens to be pregnant and always on the verge of losing her lunch. Emma Price has one child the sharply drawn Liam, aged 10 and is expecting another with her often-absent husband, Will, a self-centered filmmaker whom she plans to dump before her pregnancy is obvious. Then Liam's beautiful babysitter, Bea, winds up murdered and Emma finds herself sucked back into the job she used to do so well: investigating for the public defender's office. Bea's death appears to be linked to the shooting of two cops by a young woman who prowls New York's downtown club scene, and as perturbing as Emma's constant nausea is her refusal to tell Laurence Solomon, the handsome black cop looking into Bea's death, about her connection to the case. Of course she and Solomon conceive a mutual attraction, which is handled in a breezy, believable fashion. And the gimmick of Solomon's ease with murder victims' family members (he grew up in a family of undertakers) is interesting and unusual. But Rand's plot takes some arbitrary turns, and genre cliches like Solomon's partner's constant stuffing of himself with fast food don't help to overcome the reader's persistent queasiness. (Aug. 5)Isaacs in its publicity for Rand's first effort, and enough fans of both successful writers might just sample this to give it a jumpstart.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Emma Price teaches criminal investigating in Brooklyn, but now that her marriage has hit the skids and she's unexpectedly pregnant, she picks up her previous gig as an attorney's investigator. Her return to the workforce coincides with the murder of her ten-year-old's beloved babysitter, a warmhearted, college-age woman of much promise. Emma's job requires her to investigate the female murderer of two policemen as well, and other crimes intrude not to mention a handsome black detective. Quick-moving, well-crafted prose, a sprightly story line, and sharp focus characterize this promising first novel. For most collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060199385
• ISBN-13: 978-0060199388
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,836,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars engaging police procedural, August 14, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The One That Got Away: An Emma Price Mystery (Emma Price Mysteries) (Hardcover)

At forty Emma Price is pregnant but far from happy as she knows she is in trouble. Her film-making husband wants to end their marriage and her son Liam has been acting up lately. On the positive side, her former boss Dawn Prescott wants her back to work as an investigator in the New York's capital defender's office. She accepts the job though she has been away from the field for about a dozen years.

Emma teams up with Laurence Solomon working the case of teenager Loretta Picard charged with the murder of two police officers and the death of Beatriz Castillo. The latter was Emma's babysitter so she has personalized the inquiries into why the woman was found dead off of Coney Island. Then there is morning sickness, Liam's rebellion, and her worthless spouse to spice up any dull investigative day.

In her debut novel, Naomi Rand shows plenty of talent as she scribes an engaging police procedural story that hooks the reader through the interest in what happens to Emma. Though unacceptable reasons why Emma hid her conflict of interest hurt the plot, fans will want her to succeed and return for more stories with diapers too. Reminiscent of the movie Fargo but in New York, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY is one that the audience will want to insure does not get away from their reading material as Brooklyn has not looked this good since Seagal or perhaps Kaplan.

Harriet Klausner

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A page-turner plus, August 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The One That Got Away: An Emma Price Mystery (Emma Price Mysteries) (Hardcover)

The lead character is someone every babyboomer mom will recognize (ie, she's just like most of us!) except that she's got a bum for a husband and a far more interesting job: a crime investigator who's trying to solve the murder of her son's babysitter. The plot is complex and clever, but the real draw here is the literary quality to the writing and the complexity of the characters. Loved it!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real page-turner!, September 6, 2001

By 

April Henry "mr_e_ryter" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The One That Got Away: An Emma Price Mystery (Emma Price Mysteries) (Hardcover)

With sharply drawn characters and layers of complexity, The One That Got Away kept me up late reading to see what would happen next. What did a woman shot by the side of the road in New Mexico have to do with the deaths of two policemen in a seemingly open and shut case - or for that matter, the drowning death of Emma Price's babysitter? And Emma Price made a wonderful heroine, too. It's not like she knows karate and can hack into a computer with one hand tied behind her back. Instead, she puzzles it out along with the reader - and I certainly enjoyed going along for the ride.