Customer Reviews

Well Read and Dead: A High Society Mystery (High Society Mysteries)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

While her penthouse is being renovated, socialite Pauline Cook is on Gianfranco's yacht cruising the Mediterranean. It was when the cruise for two ended she realized he was married. It is in Paris she learns that her stock portfolio mostly invested in Enron is worthless. She rushes home to Chicago to find contractor Tag McKay overseeing the renovation. She is attracted to him though he is not in her social class and besides she needs to marry a rich man right away that hopefully she can love while he keeps her in the lifestyle she is accustomed to.

Before she goes husband hunting, Pauline visits her closest friend Whitney Armstrong to pick up her cat Fleur. Whitney's husband Jack says his wife is missing and offers Pauline five million dollars to find her; he later raises the reward to ten million. With bills mounting and no income to pay them, though way out of her element Pauline begins a search that leads her to Thailand, from there to Cambodia where Jack's factory is located and back to Thailand where she begins getting answers. When she returns to the States, a woman she does not know tries to kill Pauline.

Pauline is a member of the hoi polloi jet setters in which olde money is everything and those without are not worthy of their attention except as servants. However, her inquiry takes her into worlds she never imagined; this changes her. Her husband hunting amidst the Fortune Five Hundred is amusing and ironic when she falls in love with a middle class blue collar working stiff. As Pauline matures from spoiled snobbish socialite to valuing all types of people, she makes Catherine O'Connell's fine thriller WELL READ AND DEAD an engaging read.

Harriet Klausner

Well Read and Dead is one of the best written books about the rich that I've read. O'Connell takes amusing jabs at the noblesse oblige while unfolding a complex mystery that takes the reader from the Gold Coast of Chicago to the exotic locales of the Far East. Her style reminds me of Dominick Dunne. Recommended for people who want a page turning mystery with some underlying satire. Highly entertaining and a great sequel on the heels of Well Bred and Dead!

One of my favorite heroines Pauline Cook is back and better than ever in Well Read and Dead, the second novel in the high society mysteries by Catherine O'Connell. This time, Pauline returns to America after an extended European vacation, only to come back after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Her once exceptional stock portfolio has now crumbled, leaving her without much money to go of off- again. To make it worse, her beautiful Chicago penthouse that was highly damaged in a fire still isn't in a livable condition yet, one of her closest friends Whitney has gone missing, and Whitney took Pauline's precious cat, Fleur, with her! Pauline becomes determined to find Whitney, so she can get her cat back and score a cool multimillion dollar reward promised to her by Whitney's husband if Pauline can find her. What Pauline doesn't know is that Whitney has stumbled upon a very disturbing secret regarding her husband's lingerie business, and Pauline finding Whitney and discovering the truth could cost the woman both their lives.

Again, I was highly entertained by the antics of Pauline. Losing 20 million dollars when her Enron stock collapsed? A missing best friend and no place to live? Pauline doesn't let these obstacles bring her down, she continues her shopping, luncheons, and staying in the best room at one of Chicago's finest hotels. There was something different about Pauline in this novel compared to the first, Well Bred and Dead, and those occurrences happen when two very devastating occurrences happen. I won't say what they are because I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but I was shocked more than once in this book. I thought O'Connell's writing was once again exceptional for the character and her story, and I highly look forward to the third novel, Well Wed and Dead.

I really enjoyed this book. I came across the series by chance on the clearance rack. Too bad there are only two books in the series so far. I was really looking forward to getting the next book and realized I would have to wait. Nice mystery, I like it when a mystery has so many new and interesting subjects. I love a good mystery and it was refreshingly set in "the world of the rich" which was new to me.

Pauline, Catherine O'Connell's protagonist, is more than just a high society sleuth. She is also a cougar on the loose. In this, the second in a series that began with Well Bred and Dead, Pauline lives the high life in Chicago, Aspen, and Bangkok while she attempts to find out what happened to her best friend, the transexual wife of a lingerie magnate, who has gone missing. Along the way, romance intrudes and she grows up a lot in the process, gradually becoming more aware of the world around her. This is a great summer beach read, full of humor, suspense, and yes, even a bittersweet poignancy. In its focus on high society, the mystery is remiscent of the novels of Jane Stanton Hitchcock.

Pauline Cook is vain, spoiled and selfish. She seldom learns from life experience what the rest of us would. Catherine O'Connell's skill as an author is that her stories of Pauline's perils transform the reader rather than her fictional character.

I enjoyed this novel because Pauline faced her moments of victory and loss by exulting in the former and ignoring the latter. She may be fond of the classics and sonnets, but Pauline's life owes something to Scarlett O'Hara, too.

Both women aspire to wealth and financial security. Neither will turn up her nose at a suitor with money and connections. Passion is in abundance, even if it is spent or invested unwisely. But love is treasured by these heroines. It sparks change. It gives us hope that the shallow waters may prove deep and that the frivolous can engage in acts of unselfish generosity.

I laughed aloud at Pauline's antics, but I was genuinely saddened by at least two of the moments that sparked change for her. Pauline will go on without doing much self reflection, but the author engaged my attention without abandoning her character's "privileged" point of view. In the end, I think it was more important that I cared about what happened in the story than that Pauline did.

I cannot wait for the next installment.

I read this book in one day because I could not put it down. I'd read the first one, WELL BRED AND DEAD, so I knew what to expect as far as the superb storytelling--both in the writing and the plotting, and the (I'll call her) outrageous main character go. And I wasn't disappointed. The main character, Pauline Cook, is hilarious because half the time she doesn't see where she's a snob and the other half of the time she does see it and can't imagine that anyone in her right mind could be otherwise under those circumstances. I laughed out loud so many times that my cats ran out of the room (I never said I had a dainty laugh!), especially during the short bedroom scene where Pauline finally thinks she's got the unattached, aging billionnaire right where she wants him.

Pauline seems to always be on the brink of bankruptcy but there's almost no area in her life where she can bear to cut back -- not on the $2,000 dresses, the first class travel, the champagne, the designer everything. As she's buying $300 bottles of wine or paying thousands extra for upgrading her airline ticket, she laments her fate (is she never to have financial security?) And yet when it comes to what she owes others, she is the cheapest woman I've ever read...paying the doorman $10 for taking care of her cat for several days (that might have been in the first book) and arguing over the difference between a $4 and a $5 tip.

I was afraid Pauline would be too shallow to have my sympathy, but Catherine O'Connell pulls it off brilliantly. She makes Pauline not only likable, but admirable as well.

The only thing I have a problem with is the fact that this book just came out, so I'm going to have to wait a while for the next one. Dang!

I really liked Catherine O'Connell's first Pauline Cook book "Well Bred and Dead." This one disappointed. Her writing is still very elegant, but the whole msytery was just far-fetched. I don't mind a book preaching a social cause but here it's too contrived and heavy-handed. Especially Whitney reading The Communist Manifesto was the acme of absurdity! So many of the characters seem clueless of what's going on, & Whitney's actions, the central plot of the book, are too illogical. The romance between Pauline & the T.G. guy just didn't work, (and a hunky working man who knows poetry & comes from money, wow)...and the casual way it ends is also unsatisfactory. The author should keep Pauline more into solving social mysteries and not go into these save-the-world ventures...it just doesn't click. Will I read more of her work? Yes if it follows the first book's theme; no if it follows this one.

I read this while on a beach vacation and was sad when I had to put it down. Couldn't wait to get back to it and find out what was next for Pauline and sexy Tag! An intriguing mystery which left me in suspense until the very end. Hope the next O'Connell mystery is published very soon!!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Well Read and Dead". This book had the same amazing twists and turns in the plot, that Cathy O'Connell exhibited in her first book,"Well Bred and Dead". The character development was very well done. The best part, was having the book based in Chicago. There is nothing better than seeing your favorite city be the canvas for the story.