Just Jennifer

A Murder of Magpies by Judith Flanders (Minotaur, February 2015)

Samantha “Sam” Clair is a seasoned London book editor with a wry, often sardonic, sense of humor.  She is not only a capable editor, but can handily deal with all the various personalities and egos she runs into from her steady stream of office assistants, many of whom have yet to master the vagaries of the alphabet enough to perform basic filing tasks, to Prima Donna authors and her colleagues, editors who consider their acquisitions far superior to Sam’s more commercial women’s fiction.  At forty, Sam’s personal life is as bland and banal as her work life is hectic and glamorous (not) save the occasional dinner party given by her unstoppable, unflappable mother, a high-powered attorney.  But all this changes when police officer Jake Field arrives at Sam’s office asking about a manuscript that may or may not be missing and that may or may not have been stolen from a courier who was killed in a hit and run.  Sam isn’t too interested in the whole thing at first, she never knows when manuscripts may arrive and there are most often enough multiple paper and electronic copies floating around that it wouldn’t make sense to try and steal one copy.  When she realizes that the manuscript in question is a scandalous tell-all about the life and murder---uncovering other illegal activities along the way---or a Spanish fashion designer, written by gossip monger and dirt digger extraordinaire Kit Lovell, who is also one of Sam’s favorite authors, Sam perks up.  There is a good deal in that manuscript that will open Kit, and in turn the publisher up to possible libel and slander suits, but Sam isn’t worried about that, Legal always vets everything carefully and will deal with that.  What does concern her is that Kit misses a meeting and seems to simply vanish into thin air.  Jake Field isn’t impressed at first as Kit is a bit of a flake (Sam once found six months’ worth of not listened to voice messages on his mobile phone) but Sam is adamant and using Kit’s book as a cover story but also as a road map, begins to follow Kit’s trail, a trail that leads her into corporate intrigue and corruption, government investigations and right into the hands of a crazed murderer.

Laugh aloud funny, Sam’s dry wit and wry observations coupled with her mother’s no nonsense approach---and arsenal of skeleton keys---and insider secrets from the publishing world, including a comedy of errors involving the misunderstood manuscript of one of Sam’s longtime authors, along with a smart, clever mystery, make this first novel from Victorian expert Judith Flanders a slam dunk for all mystery readers.