Paperback Reader

High Heels and Homicide is about a former romance author who wasn’t doing so well in her career. So she changed her pseudonym to Cleo Dooley (she likes the way the Os look on book covers) and, thanks to her successful Regency-set mystery series featuring the Alexandre Blake, Viscount Saint Just, and his affable, literal-minded sidekick Sterling Balder, is very happy with her career, New York Times bestseller happy.

Maggie’s life (and, frankly, link to sanity) is challenged when Saint Just and Sterling poof into her New York apartment. As in, “poof, we are no longer figments of your imagination, and we’re going to be expensive.” Apparently, Saint Just decided that he’s going to evolve. Step one is escaping from Maggie’s brain. Yes, well, when you think about it, don’t we all fear this sort of thing?

After getting past the shock of having her fictional creations appear as living, breathing individuals, Maggie comes to realize that there’s a huge difference between crafting the perfect hero – arrogant, self-assured, urbane, witty, condescending, handsome in a way the combines the best of all our favorite sex symbols in a pleasing fashion, sexually brilliant – on paper and living with him. For more information on the challenges posed by this, look up “arrogant” in the dictionary.

Sterling, if you’re wondering, is a delight in human form. He’s learning to cook and has discovered that he’s inherently neat. Useful in a man, don’t you think?

Over the course of the series, Maggie and Saint Just (masquerading as Alex Blake) attempt to settle into their weird existence – including the part where Maggie let her fantasies run wild when creating Saint Just, and, well, now here is her fantasy in the flesh. Of course, when a man just poofs into your life, you begin to wonder when he’s going to poof right out. This prevents Maggie from making the stupid mistake of jumping into bed with the man, though, as the series has gone on, Michaels has upped the sexual tension – and innuendo – quite nicely. Another key aspect is that Saint Just, being a detective in fiction, believes his mission in life is to solve crimes. Luckily, he encounters murder and mayhem with alarming regularity.

In High Heels and Homicide, Maggie and her entourage travel to England to watch the filming of one of Maggie’s novels for a movie of the week (yes, I know, fictional creations who suddenly appear out of one’s imagination might have trouble traveling, but Saint Just is necessarily resourceful and has handled the acquisition of forged documents). In addition to Maggie, Saint Just, and Sterling, their entourage Maggie’s editor, Bernice Toland-James (newly sober) and her agent, Tabitha Leighton. The only major character missing from the journey is “left-tenant” Steve Wendell of the NYPD. This is only important information because Wendell serves as a not-very-believable possible love interest for Maggie. Not even he believes he’s going to get this girl.

Before long, our hapless heroes have found themselves stranded in an English manor house with a dysfunctional film crew (complete with more than one Hollywood stereotype, sigh), cut off from the world thanks to a torrential downpour. The lights go out, and Maggie and Saint Just encounter a dead body. A soaking wet dead body, which is just icky, you know? Someone in the house party is a murderer. Maggie immediately rules herself out – even though the deceased is the screenplay writer…a man she just happened to threaten due to his butchering of her book – and a few others.

Michaels doesn’t rush through this story, but keeps things moving quite briskly. Maggie and team even have time to stop off at her parents’ for a frosty Thanksgiving holiday before heading for England (an England that Saint Just discovers is nothing like he remembers, despite the fact that neither he nor Maggie have ever been there). Throughout the series, Maggie has been revealed to be a mess of neuroses, most stemming from her overbearing mother. Her weekly visits to Doctor Bob, ostensibly to help her quit smoking, are used to examine her relationship with her mother; everyone agrees that Maggie needs to break up with Doctor Bob, but she’s now thinking she should just buy a lifetime membership in therapy. The cigarettes are just the tip of her emotional problems.

Thankfully, we are not bludgeoned over the head with mother-daughter scenes in this book. Entire epics are written about the ways in which our mothers mess us up (not my mother, just in case she’s reading this; I am the exception). Delving into those dynamics would make this a very different book, and I was quite happy with the one I got.

Michaels’ background as a Regency writer serves her well in the novel’s dialogue. She excels at both the witty repartee that distinguishes good Regency romance from bad and, oh joy!, at modern back-and-forth between real humans. In one scene, a gorgeous male model joins the overcrowded house party and the women react as any normal, red-blooded straight woman would. Oh I do love it when women friends talk to each other like women friends, albeit the witty kind who have writing staffs:

…A young Peter O’Toole in Ralph Lauren; as gorgeous as any of Lauren’s models. Slightly aloof, faintly bored, enticingly detached.

As she [Maggie] stared, Bernie came up behind her, bent down to whisper in her ear. “Can I keep him, Mommy? Huh, huh, can I, please?”

“We’ll see sweetheart. We don’t know who he is , let alone where he’s been.”…

Maggie and Saint Just also seem more Nick and Nora in this book. They play off each other nicely, always in sync in a way that tells the reader that no matter what happens, they have each other’s back. This makes the drawing out of the inevitable sex scene bearable – you know they’re going to do it eventually, but, patience, dears, patience. The foreplay is just as satisfying. There’s a delightful smoothness to their dialogue that propels the story forward while making it clear that there’s a definite pas de deux occurring:

“Suicide, of course, as Troy’s first choice was that Undercuffler did indeed do away with himself. Provoked by your cruel rebuffs, by the way, your constant harping on the very reasonable improvements he made to your book. And then you crushed him – totally destroyed his spirit – by refusing to read his own script.”

“I was going to read the damn thing,” Maggie protested. “Eventually.”

“Yes, I’m sure you would have, thanks to your lamentable inability to say no and mean it when others encroach on your good-heartedness…”

Maggie does, naturally, object to the notion that any changes made the deceased screenwriter were reasonable. Part of me wants to warn readers – pure readers, not readers who are also writers – that this series is very much inside baseball. You learn some ugly truths about the writing and publishing business. Some examples include: writers wear really ratty clothing while working and don’t always shower before indulging in the creative process; publishers won’t think twice about dumping a writer who isn’t meeting targets; some dumped writers reinvent themselves successfully, some don’t; everyone’s a snob.

Because this series isn’t romance, per se, Michaels also gets to play with the concept of perfection, as embodied by heroes and heroines. If I had to life with a guy like Saint Just, I’d think twice about fantasy men, even while acknowledging the allure of having a man on this earth designed to make me extremely happy. And Saint Just is Maggie’s fantasy, to the point where she wonders where her thoughts end and his begin. It surely contributes to the seamlessness in their dialogue, but it also highlights the way he becomes his own man over the course of the series.

Also, because this isn’t a romance, per se, Michaels gets to do stuff that no self-respecting romance writer would dream of. Maggie is, gasp!, a chain smoker trying to quit, without a shred of dignity in the process (a nicotine inhaler, in public? The shame.). Her editor, Bernie, just finished a stint in rehab. I love Bernie, she’s Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth – and very vulnerable. With a wicked sense of humor. And then there’s Tabby, married to the bed-hopping champion of the world. Tabby gets her revenge here with a sexy British actor. No recriminations. No judgments. Michaels almost seems to be exposing her inner demons here.

There is even an ongoing saga involving an organization called “We Are Romance”(WAR); it is, if you are, oh, a member of Romance Writers of America (RWA), hilarious. It might be a little too eye-opening for those who’d rather not see the ugly side of popular fiction. Michaels satirizes gently, but she does get some good punches in during the course of the series. Note: WAR is not featured in this particular novel, but since it’s my review, I get to add whatever bits of extraneous nonsense that I wish.

Yes, I know. With power comes great responsibility.

Speaking of extraneous nonsense, I find that I must also discuss the rather odd turn in marketing taken by Michaels’ publisher. The first books in the series were named Maggie Needs An Alibi, Maggie By The Book, and Maggie Without a Clue. I’m sure you get the pattern. Then, without proper warning, the syntax changes: High Heels and Homicide and High Heels and Holidays (not yet read by yours truly). WTF? Not to put too fine a point on it, but Maggie is almost always dressed not to impress; the whole “High Heels” thing feels and smells like a marketing decision made without regard to the book’s contents. Yeah, Maggie cleans up well, but the branding shift is nonsensical.

I lament the chicklit-esque branding because it makes this series feel run-of-the-mill rather than unique. Does this mean I’m going to skip the next in the series? We all know me well enough to know the answer to that question. Do I think you should indulge? Absolutely. As long as you’re clear on the differences between reality and fantasy.

Reality is the one where you find their socks behind the cushions on the couch.

You can find Kasey Michaels here. You can buy High Heels and Homicide here or here.