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.
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