Simon Brooke 2cool2btrue

2cool2btrue

Simon Brooke

Downtown, Dec 2005, $13.00, 320 pp.

ISBN: 0743477634

After an eternity as a male model, thirty years old Charlie Barrett, listening to his younger peers' patter, concludes he is too old for this line of work anymore though the globetrotting, Paris, and money are great. Following a shoot, Piers and Guy offer Charlie a job in marketing their new Internet web site 2cool2btrue.com. He consults with his girlfriend Lauren, who tells him to accept the opportunity so Charlie does.

Charlie's new job enables him to apply his long forgotten college degree while searching for luxurious items for the firm to sell over the net to their Armani-like customers, but the long hours and his time spent schmoozing reporter Nora Benthill devastate his relationship with Lauren. Work abruptly collapses when Piers and Guy vanish along with a lot of investor money. The Metropolitan Police investigate "Pretty Boy" Charlie, the face of 2cool2btrue, who turns to his modeling pals to help him prove his innocence, but no one, even Lauren, wants to be linked to him because that could devastate their career. Only the "fickle finger of fate" has Nora there for him.

2cool2btrue is a well written engaging contemporary tale that starts off as a coming of age character study although the hero is thirty, but about half way in turns into an amateur sleuth investigative thriller as a beleaguered Charlie seeks to prove his innocence. In some ways, the story line will remind the audience of the movie the Happening as Charlie at first cannot believe his plight is real, but soon finds his family and friends desert him in his hour of need. The eccentric Nora adds a degree of wacko to what is happening to Charlie.

Harriet Klausner