Customer Reviews

This Dame for Hire

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I haven't even finished this book, but am writing this review.
If you love l940's movies as I do, you will love this book.
Especially like the movie star names of the characters.

Sandra Scoppettone has hit on a wonderfully unique idea in her newest novel, This Dame For Hire.

Faye Quick is a bright, able- bodied, not to mention, gutsy woman. It's 1943 and Faye is working for a sleazy PI, Woody Mason, who heads off to WWII. And it's up to Faye to step up and take the reins of the A Detective Agency so the boss has a business to come home to after the war ends.

It wasn't a surprise to Faye when Mr. & Mrs. West entered her office wanting to hire her. After all, Faye had been the one to find their daughter's dead body on a Greenwich Village sidewalk. And now she's determined to solve the murder of the well-to-do NYU student and Park Avenue resident.

The novel's tone, Faye's tough and feisty attitude, the dialogue and the sense of time all contribute to the feel of 1943 New York in this suspense novel. I only hope it's the first of many Faye Quick adventures because I will faithfully follow her as she traipses through the sordid and steamy underbelly of New York City in the 1940s. This Dame For Hire was better than an 'old' movie, a bowl of popcorn and a rainy Saturday night (which would be nirvana for me). It will be for other mystery lovers also.

With this book Scoppettone becomes to vintage New York crime writing what Chandler is to Los Angeles. The hard biting one liners begin on page one and don't rest until the last sentence of the last page. To those armchair critics who have taken exception to the author's use of period language, I suggest you may have missed the subtleness of her wit. Faye Quick may say "ya know" alot, but she also tells the reader she knows the defination of alliteration. This dame has a method to her madness. Anyway, I love this book; in-between the first page and the last, there is plently of action, plot, and menacing murder suspects to keep the persistently professional yet charming PI protagonist up to her headlights in mystery. Whodunit? I ain't tell'n ya. Ankle on down to your local book store ASAP. This is an instant classic!

Faye Quick is not your typical PI. When her boss leaves for the military during WWII, Faye takes over the New York detective agency where she had been a secretary. The author does a great job of capturing the attitudes and predjudices of the period, and Miss Quick is one smart dame with a big heart. The characters are quirky and fun. Written in the vernacular, it can take some getting used to, but the technique pretty accurately conveys the time period and differentiates classes of people. This is a fun read, meant to be enjoyed.

Scoppettone keeps the dialogue and suspects humming along in this book. The narrator is a female PI who fell into the position when her boss signed up to fight the Axis.
The settings and details are good without being over-detailed, and the atmosphere of WWII NYC rings true.

There is plenty of humor, and enough zing to make this book a fine choice to spend a couple of days with.

She started out working as a secretary for Woody Mason of A Detective Agency in 1940 but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he enlisted. Wanting to have the business when he came home, he made his secretary Faye Quick a private detective and she is now working her own cases with her own secretary to do the clerical work. Since January of 1942 she has been doing well for herself and not even tripping over the murdered body of a woman in the snow dousing her enthusiasm for life.

A few months after finding Claudette West, her parents arrive in her office wanting to hire Faye to find their daughter's killer because they believe the police aren't giving the case enough attention. Feeling an obligation to the woman, she accepts the case and quickly learns that Claudette had a lot of men interested in her and was pregnant. Faye pounds the pavement asking anyone who was close to Claudette what they knew of the men (most of them suspects) and the pregnancy. She thinks that there is a link between her lover and her murder. Applying solid investigative methods she is bound to find out who the killer is.

New York City in 1943 is dark & gritty just like the case the protagonist is working on is. Sandra Scoppettone captures the ambience of the era through the use of historical facts and the era's vernacular. Renowned for her grand-breaking Lauren Laurano Novels, Ms. Scoppettone has created another fabulous series that is sure to win her an award nomination for its originality and brilliant characterizations.

Harriet Klausner

What a great read! Reminds me of the Janet Evanovich series ("One for the Money" etc.) starring another gutsy skirt (= broad), Stephanie Plum, but with an added historical dimension, a "film noir" quality, and 1940's sensibility (not even "R" rated). Loved the details on everyday life during WWII and the engaging use of the NY dialect to add a sense of grittiness and reality to the dialog. Hope this is just the first of many Faye Quick novels we have to look forward to!

This mystery has gotten some rave reviews, and I haven't a clue why. While the writing can at times reach the level of witty, the characters (with one exception) are stock and the plot is by-the-numbers, with one exception -- and the exception kills the novel.

It's about a female PI, Faye Quick, and it's set in WWII New York City. While Scoppettone has an eye and ear for historical detail, it seems less like atmosphere and more like a checklist of "things to put in a WWII novel in New York City." Horn & Hardart? Check. Frequent references to celebrities? Check. The Algonquin? Check. Diners? Check. And so on.

Also, Faye talks like the tough dames in those '40s movies you been hearin' about. Which works well if not overdone, as it is here. And there is one entirely too precious touch in the novel which drives me crazy: Almost everyone in the novel is named after 40s actors and actresses. There's a Lake, a Gable, a Mitchum, a Flynn, and women named Hattie, Claudette and Myrna -- and that's just scratching the surface. Once or twice would have been cute; but when almost everyone in the damn book is named after some actor or celebrity it becomes very distracting. It would be like doing a book about the '50s rock scene with singers named Elvis Haley and Jerry Lee Valens.

And then there's the break from formula. When you read something billed as an epic fantasy, you don't expect people to pull out phasers. In a typical western, people don't suddenly start talking like extras from the Godfather. And in a mystery like This Dame for Hire, billed as a traditional mystery, you don't have the main characters' best friend be an honest-to-god pyschic.

That's as in not phony; that's as in "I can read your mind and see your past." It kills the story. Not that it wasn't on life support anyway.

There's nothing wrong with having a story about a psychic crimesolver. Or a regular detective and her psychic friend. But if you don't bill them that way, that's cheating. You're violating the rules of the genre without good reason and without warning.

This surprises me; I liked Scoppettone's Lauren Laurano books. Laurano had depth and the plots were not cliched, and there were no massive cheats like the pyschic is here. With any luck, this is just a misstep for her.

Still, I will not be reading any more Faye quick stories.

Now don't get me wrong. I ain't got nuthin against women suffrage or anthin. I mean, I figure the same bums are goin to be in office whether the ladies vote or not. Right. But hirin a skirt to be a detective in a 1940s noir mystery, that just ain't jake.

The story itself has more holes in it than Al Capone's Valentines Day Party guests. For instance, Faye Quick was the secretary ta a real gumshoe until he got drafted and sent ta the Pacific. Quick had rode along wit her boss on stakeouts on one or two casions and that apparently qualified her to take over his detectin when he got shipped out. Don't sound copecetic ta me. Then a young woman gets whacked and after Quick noodles out that the initials that appear in some documents are clues to the identity of the murderer, we find out that all six or seven of the mugs what are suspects just happen ta share some of dose same initials. Hey! Like that happens everyday, right?

Quick's character ain't exactly highly developed. Despite bein a dame, Quick speaks just like the tough, cynical PIs you find in all the noir mysteries. The only way you can tell this gat-totin broad is a gal is that she sometimes wishes she had some new silk stockins to cover her gams.

The book is written in the vernacular. Quick talks like me, usin the same slang, phrases, spellins, and sin tax as I do here. It gets annoyin. Real annoyin. Now, maybe you're of the opinion that the snappy dialog in noir mysteries are half the fun, but the dialog in this book is so wooden that Noah coulda used it to build an ark. I found it was distractin and made the story hard to follow, and its not like my lips was movin when I was readin it.

Faye Quick, girl PI, is probably not goin to like what I said here, but I figure, if she can't stand the heat she shoulda stayed in the kitchen.

I read the second installment("Too Darn Hot") first. I know, I know your supposed to read them in consecutive order. In this genre the central character and supporting cast drive the series. When read in order the reader can watch the develpoment of the characters unfold. So I know a little bit more about Faye Quick than I should. Extremely funny, Faye thinks what you think, and says things that you only wish you could. Faye steals the show. The mystery is a backdrop.