Emily J. Edwards

The idea behind this book is irresistible . . . so much so it's a small wonder that nobody has tried it before. It's 1950, and the street-smart, tough-talking "girl Friday" of a down-market New York private eye has to turn detective herself when a seemingly straightforward case blows up, a lifeless body turns up in their Hell's Kitchen office, and the cops start seeing her boss as the prime suspect. Any detective story fan can see the possibilities: Kinsey Millhone, V. I. Warshawski, or Kat Colorado in mid-century drag . . . the kind of smart, sassy character that would have been played by Jean Arthur or Barbara Stanwyk in the 1940s, or Kathleen Turner or Karen Allen in the 1980s. New York City, at the height of its postwar glamour, would make an endlessly fascinating background.

The execution is another matter.

"Wisecracking private eye" is a distinct kind of character voice . . . so is "mid-century New York working girl" . . . so is "rapid-fire office banter between co-workers." They all have distinct rhythms, distinct word choices, and distinct ways of using dialogue to establish characters and relationships between them. There are dozens of brilliant examples (in print, in film, on television) of all three, and many of them are among the stone-cold classics of their respective genres. The characters in those stories, speaking with those voices, don't sound like real people . . . they sound like idealized versions of real people: witty, wise, sardonic, and clever all at once. Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson . . . Maddie Hayes and David Addison . . . Spenser and Hawk . . . Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin . . . 007 and Miss Moneypenny . . . Amos Walker and whoever he's talking to.

The characters in Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man don't sound like that (though they're clearly intended to). Nor do they sound like real people (let alone real post-war New Yorkers). Every time someone opens their mouth, the dialogue just clangs, like a genre pastiche written by somebody who skimmed a couple of examples of the genre once, rather than immersing themselves in its conventions and figuring out how (and why) they work.

Attempts to establish the time and place clang just as hard. The descriptive passages are simultaneously over-detailed and under-specified: lots of unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, and extraneous clauses . . . virtually no details that underscore what it's like to live in New York in 1950, or that show us things that Our Heroine takes for granted (because she lives in that world) but that would be startling to modern readers. World War II, during which all the major characters would have been adults, seems weirdly absent from their lives. Viv is 31, at a time when the average age of first marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men, but nobody, not even her busybody Russian landlady, thinks this is odd.

I really, really wanted to lose myself in the story and the world, but every second paragraph yanked me out of it. Maybe you'll love it, but I couldn't make it past Chapter 2.… (mehr)

This is the second in the Viviana Valentine series and unfortunately the novelty of the first did not transfer to the second book. Buster Beacon, a friend of Tally's (from the first book) is hearing strange noises in his Westchester mansion and hires Tommy and Viviana to be his weekend guests to check it out.
An homage to the hardboiled detective noir fiction of the 1950s, there's a bunch of "Dollface"s and "Ol' Tommy Boy's but none of the flair of that era.
Of course, there's a death and of course they figure it out. It takes hard work to create a series and even harder work to create a humorous one. Sometimes it doesn't pan out.… (mehr)

1950’s PI duo’s sleuthing!

Ok I wasn’t feeling the love, I was finding it hard to identify with the characters. I knew it was supposed to be a spoof on 1950’s type mystery novels, but on first beginnings reading I found it more a B grade movie than a jewel in the crown. Anyway I gave it a second chance read and loved it!
I adored the PI team of Viviana Valentine and Tommy Fortuna. They were awesome.
This is a locked room mystery and as I became more engrossed it sparked me up. At that first attempt I obviously was not in the mood, next time round was a winner.
I love the cover of the book btw.
Tally, Viviana and Tommy’s very rich secretary and acquaintance from a prior case, takes a phone call at home from her friend Buster Beacon needing a private eye for some rather embarrassing, ridiculous even, occurrences. As Buster puts it, “Woo-woo creaks and ghastly sounds.”
Viviana and Tommy take the case and find themselves upstate at Buster’s country mansion ready to investigate those strange noises.
There’s a mansion with passageways, a body, a sudden snowstorm, and let’s not forget the woo-woo noises!
The guests range from two bright tech men with work that involves dangerous secrets, an investor and his wife, a neighbor, a regular upper crust gal, and of course the butler.
Street smart and sassy playing well into its genre and era. All I can say is thank goodness I began over. I was won!

A Crooked Lane Books ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.… (mehr)