None of Your Business

June 16, 2003
As Block demonstrated in Was It Something I Said?, she has Richard Condon's manic energy and the here-and-now vocabulary of this week's Time Out New York. Oh, and she has the police procedural thing down pat. Best of all, she has a comic streak that's ruthless yet weirdly compassionate, because it's truly character-driven. Take Erica King, the mastermind behind a plot that involves the computerized theft of millions. To her self-absorbed colleagues at the accounting firm, she's a dowdy, bitchy workaholic spinster whose dull life can only be improved by hearing about their menstrual cramps and getting advice on updating her hairstyle. But in several separate incarnations—as Heidi, Maria and Marjorie—she has different wardrobes, addresses, computers and psyches, not to mention illicit megabucks stashed offshore. Although the old-fashioned hairdo turns out to be a wig covering baldness dating to childhood, it's somehow no surprise that she lures her boss, tycoon Mitch Greiff, away from his former model wife, Patricia, who was always bothering him to put on sunblock and make nice to their new best friends. Just to even the score, Patricia seduces Det. Anthony Ballestrino, in charge of figuring out what happened to a great deal of money supposedly being managed by Mitch Greiff's firm. With its cast of dozens, all fully realized, the novel is occasionally dizzying but always diverting. Agent, Gail Hochman.

May 1, 2003
Computer crimes, crooked accountants, and stolen identities form the building blocks of this entertaining second novel from Block (Was It Something I Said?). When Mitch Greiff disappears, along with $103 million from his accounting firm's celebrity clients, two of New York's finest-Dennis Sprague and Tony Ballestrino, hard-working detectives from the Computer Crimes Squad-are assigned to the case. They quickly home in on the likely involvement of dowdy, dedicated, and, as it turns out, exceedingly larcenous Erica King, one of Mitch's colleagues. But what's the relationship between Mitch and Erica? Is Mitch alive or dead? Who's the master plotter? And what's become of all that money? Block has wisely chosen to tell this caper novel from the perspectives of both the police and the perps, a technique that allows her to humanize her characters by weaving in many details of their personal lives and histories. The novel's ending is just ambiguous enough to allow for the possibility of a sequel, which will be welcomed by many readers. Recommended for most popular fiction collections.-Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2003
Block follows up her comic romance "Was It Something I Said? "(1998) with an unusual and hilarious take on the police procedural. Two partners in the NYPD's Computer Crimes Squad are working to track down an accountant suspected of embezzling millions of dollars. The suspect's assistant, Erica, is a frumpy and seemingly forgettable woman with a talent for telling people what she thinks of them in no uncertain terms. But is she telling the whole truth about her boss? All is eventually revealed, from Erica's life story and surprising hidden depths to the missing accountant's none-too-idyllic secret existence, the trials of the irritated wife he left behind, and the two detectives' private struggles with marriage, dating, dieting, and nagging mothers. No one is immune to scrutiny in this sprawling, entertaining novel full of eccentric New Yorkers whose lives are not proceeding quite as they had planned. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)