Sandra Scoppettone This Dame for Hire

This Dame for Hire

Sandra Scoppettone

Ballantine, July 2005, $21.95, 253 pp.

ISBN 034547810x

She started out working as a secretary for Woody Mason of A Detective Agency in 1940 but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he enlisted. Wanting to have the business when he came home, he made his secretary Faye Quick a private detective and she is now working her own cases with her own secretary to do the clerical work. Since January of 1942 she has been doing well for herself and not even tripping over the murdered body of a woman in the snow dousing her enthusiasm for life.

A few months after finding Claudette West, her parents arrive in her office wanting to hire Faye to find their daughter's killer because they believe the police aren't giving the case enough attention. Feeling an obligation to the woman, she accepts the case and quickly learns that Claudette had a lot of men interested in her and was pregnant. Faye pounds the pavement asking anyone who was close to Claudette what they knew of the men (most of them suspects) and the pregnancy. She thinks that there is a link between her lover and her murder. Applying solid investigative methods she is bound to find out who the killer is.

New York City in 1943 is dark & gritty just like the case the protagonist is working on is. Sandra Scoppettone captures the ambience of the era through the use of historical facts and the era's vernacular. Renowned for her grand-breaking Lauren Laurano Novels, Ms. Scoppettone has created another fabulous series that is sure to win her an award nomination for its originality and brilliant characterizations.

Harriet Klausner