Almost True Confessions

July 22, 2013
O’Connor’s droll second romantic suspenser featuring incorrigibly curious Manhattan copy editor Miranda “Rannie” Bookman (after 2007’s Dangerous Admissions) finds the divorced mother of two barely scraping by on freelance assignments from friends and former colleagues like Ellen Donahoe and handouts from loaded ex-mother-in-law Mary Lorimar. Which helps explain Rannie’s excitement when Ellen hires her to handle the new top-secret tell-all on sainted society grande dame Charlotte Cummings by notorious celebrity skewerer Ret Sullivan—that is, until Rannie goes to pick up the manuscript and finds Ret’s body. A second murder puts Rannie on the sleuthing trail in earnest. As Rannie’s increasingly dangerous digging takes her from Cummings’s Palladian-style manse to a gala at the Metropolitan Museum, O’Connor serves up plenty of glitz and tangy social satire. The actual multiple murder mystery, however, never rises above the level of a last-suspect-standing TV movie. Agent: Doug Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic.

August 15, 2013
An elusive writer is murdered in spite of the tameness of her latest tell-all. Although Miranda "Rannie" Bookman has been carefully instructed by her former police officer boyfriend, Tim Butler, that she's absolutely not allowed to get involved in any more trouble, it's difficult to keep to the straight and narrow now that Simon & Schuster has given her more free time by letting her go. When senior editor Ellen Donahoe offers Rannie some freelance work copy editing a top-secret new release and Rannie signs the appropriate disclosure agreement, she's thrilled to find out the gig is editing Ret Sullivan's latest. Ret is known for digging the dirt on celebrities; that's what got her in trouble years before, when she uncovered a particularly juicy tidbit about a star who got revenge in a personal way. Rannie expects Ret's book to be an expose, especially because it's about wealthy, little-known Charlotte Cummings. But the biography is definitely more tame than Ret's other work. When Rannie shows up at Ret's and finds the reclusive writer tied to the bed and strangled, she's all the more shocked since she knows that Charlotte's family would have no reason to exact revenge on Ret. Rannie feels an obligation to understand what happened to Ret, and she suspects it's related to a mysterious dedication in Ret's latest work: to "Audeo." If only Rannie can figure out Audeo's identity, she may have the key to the murder. O'Connor (Dangerous Admissions, 2007) definitely has an insider's view of the publishing world, though she doesn't make the romantic aspects of Rannie's life nearly as interesting.

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October 1, 2013

Miranda "Rannie" Bookman agrees to copyedit a hush-hush book that threatens to be a gossipy tell-all about a prominent New York City society centenarian. Suddenly, other people attached to the project are dying, and Rannie speculates that the book is the motivation. Perhaps her teen kids and her ex-cop lover complicate Rannie's amateur sleuthing, but they inadvertently give her the avenues to snoop more efficiently. The trouble is, Rannie's hunches ("justifiable paranoia") are correct, and now she's the killer's next target. VERDICT Working upstream from her phenomenally popular "Fancy Nancy" children's series, O'Connor proves how well she can write snappy and comic adult fiction. Share with readers who relish Elinor Lipman's or Jeanne Ray's style of humor and female leads. This is the second case for the Manhattan-based copy editor sleuth (Dangerous Admissions), whose prowess with grammar holds her in good stead.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013
What begins as a juicy assignment for Rannie Bookman, a freelance copy editor in New York, quickly turns into staying one step ahead of a murderer. She is thrilled to be asked to copyedit reclusive Ret Sullivan's latest book, a tell-all about aged socialite Charlotte Cummings. It's a rush job, so Ret's editor, Ellen, sends a limousine for Rannie to pick up the manuscript from Sullivan directly. Instead, she finds the author murdered in a style that could be the opening scene from a Law & Order: SVU episode, and the manuscript becomes part of the crime scene. Fortunately, Ellen has another copy, which Rannie copyedits, seeking clues to offer the police, though better clues emerge at the society events she attends with her exmother-in-law, Mary, whose friend Daisy knows Cummings' granddaughter. The second of O'Connor's books to feature Rannie, this is a fast-paced mystery, leavened with insider glimpses of the publishing world and insight into the life of a single parent with a teen son.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)