"Wonderful, funny, and upbeat mystery"

She was doing well writing historical romances but when her sales plummeted she switched genres and is happily writing one historical Regency mystery a year for seven figures. Maggie Kelley, writing as Cleo Dooley, has a New York Times best selling series starring the handsome, suave and devil may care amateur sleuth Alexandre Drake, Viscount Saint Just and his Watson, Sterling Bader. Maggie's imagination made these two characters so realistic that they appeared in her living room one day and never left.

Saint Just decides that all three of them are going to attend the annual WAR (We Are Romance, Inc.) because he wants to win the prize more for the costume and sexiest cover model. From the start, the conference proves to be unsafe, as conventioneers are electrocuted, inundated with prank phone calls, and overwhelmed by an infestation of mice. When a romance reviewer is murdered, it is up to Saint Just and company to figure out whom is the prankster and who is the killer.

If the heroine was more secure and if she believed that Saint Just wouldn't disappear, she might allow herself to care for him. Since she is afraid she tries, sometimes successfully, to ignore the attraction she feels for her creation (shades of Dr. Frankenstein). Kasey Michaels has written a wonderful, funny, and upbeat mystery that satirizes the romance and mystery publishing industries and the conventions they spawn.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted July 13, 2003