"Strong satire"

Six years ago, Toland Publishing fired midlist romance writers including Maggie Kelly better known as historical author Alica Tate Evans. Rather than cry in her tea, Maggie switches genres trying her word processing on the Regency mystery sub-genre. Creating amateur sleuth hero Viscount Saint Just and his sidekick Balder, Maggie uses the "O" filled pen name of Cleo Dooley. She quickly becomes a New York Times best selling author.

Maggie begins to wonder what is in her tea when Saint Just and Balder appear in her Manhattan apartment. As they drive her crazy, Maggie feels responsibility for the duo even though they adjust to modern life like ducks to water. When Maggie's publisher Kirk Toland dies after dining at her home, the police suspect the author killed him, as they were former lovers. Naturally Saint Just reverts to character and investigates the homicide in his nineteenth century aristocratic manner that skewers urbane urbanites.

Renowned writer Kasey Michaels takes the trendy dive from romance to mystery with MAGGIE NEEDS AN ALIBI, but does not just add a lot of suspense to a tale of love as commonly done with the switch. Unlike Maggie, Ms. Michaels needs no alibis as she satirizes the publishing industry where small success mean downsizing. The amusing story line contains an entertaining who-done-it starring a wonderful heroine and her now living Regency characters learning the uses of plastic faster than solving the case. This cast humorously skewers anyone in its path while making this novel into a deserving sure shot bestseller.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 16, 2002

In paperback 2003.

Summary

Maggie Kelly is nothing if not resilient. She bounced back after getting fired from her old job as a writer of historical romances, reinventing herself as a mystery author. She bounced back when she discovered her lover -- who also happens to be her publisher -- cheating on her. And she bounces right back into her smoking habit whenever she tries to quit. But something just happened that's got tough-talking, quick-thinking Maggie swooning into her super-soft sofa cushions.

Something in the form of an incredibly sexy Englishman by the name of Saint Just. Alexandre Drake, Viscount Saint Just, to be exact. Tall, dark, handsome, with an accent to die for and charm to spare, he's everything she's ever dreamed of in a man. There's just one problem. He is her dream man. He's every woman's fantasy. He's the character who's made her a bestselling author. He's not real. No, he's not real -- but he is, for some reason, standing in the middle of Maggie's apartment. With the adorable, bumbling sidekick she created expressly for him right by his side -- and eating that piece of fried chicken she was saving for lunch.

What's a savvy, New York City writer to do when faced with the figments of her imagination -- in the flesh? Well, short of checking herself into Bellevue, she'd better get used to it. Because these guys aren't going anywhere -- at least not until they've given Maggie a little unsolicited editorial advice regarding her latest telling of their adventures. Still, it's not the worst thing in the world to have a roomie as gorgeous as Saint Just -- even if he is somewhat arrogant -- and prone to leaving the cap off the toothpaste.

But just as Maggie's getting used to her new houseguests, things start to get quite a bit more complicated -- in the "homicide" sense of the world. It seems her ex-lover, Kirk Toland, ever the inconsiderate cad, has had the nerve to die right there in her living room... of poisoning... after eating a dinner Maggie made. Her cooking isn't that bad -- is it? And if that weren't weird enough, Toland's death is soon followed by the murder of a colleague whom everyone knows Maggie hated.

So, the mystery writer has become the murder suspect. And the only sleuth who's really on Maggie's side is the one she invented.