Sandra Scoppettone Too Darn Hot

Too Darn Hot

Sandra Scoppettone

Ballantine, Jul 2006, $24.95

ISBN: 0345478126

After Faye Quick left her parents' home in New Jersey, she moved to New York where she became a secretary to Woody Mason of the A Detective Agency. When America entered WWII, Woody enlisted leaving Faye in charge of the business. To her surprise, she liked being a private investigator and solved enough cases to keep the agency afloat.

Her latest case begins when Claire Turner hires her to find her missing boyfriend, Private Charlie Ladd. Faye goes to the hotel where Charlie was staying where she finds a corpse. The body is identified as Charlie's pal Private David Cooper. There is no sign of Charlie anywhere until Claire receives a phone call from an unknown person who insists her boyfriend has been kidnapped and will be returned unharmed in exchange for $100,000. The exchange is not smooth and another dead person is found. Faye has to quickly figure out who is behind the homicides before someone else dies.

The audience will feel as if they are transported back to 1943 NYC due to the realistic tidbits that are cleverly woven into the fine historical mystery to include idioms and slang, and references and items (artifacts?) from the WWII era. The protagonist is a tough independent Jersey girl crossing the Hudson to prove she is also a quick thinker as she connects the dots to try and does solve cases. TOO DARN HOT is a gripping private detective tale with a pulp fiction feel to its 1940s ambience.

Harriet Klausner