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Spygirl is supposedly a memoir about Amy Gray's job at a low-life private eye firm. In fact, it is mostly about her unremarkable love life, with a running subplot about her eccentric private eye co-workers and the funny people she runs into in New York. "Funny" sometimes means "ethnic," as in the Muslim cabbie with a crush on her. I waited for him to do something interesting, but no: he was Muslim! And a cabbie! And he had a crush on her! That, apparently, made him worth an anecdote. There was also a Korean guy with Tourette's syndrome. Again, Korean! With Tourettes! Anecdote!
What was conspicuously absent was the reason I bought the book: accounts of her private eye investigations. Those consisted of a couple of mildly interesting stories, which made up approximately one-tenth of the total verbiage. What a bait-and-switch.
In False Colors, Kit gets roped into impersonating his missing twin Evelyn by their charming but slightly addle-pated mother; this is supposed to be for one evening, but Evelyn doesn't return, and the woman he was courting thinks Kit is Evelyn. Worse, Kit starts to fall for her. This is mid-rank Heyer, amusing but not reaching the heights of hilarious. (Kit could have gotten into much more sticky situations than he actually did.) The main characters are likable, but it's the supporting cast of older people who shine: the lovely, goofy mother; the formidable grandmother; the fat, wealthy dandy who has much more to him than meets the eye.
What was conspicuously absent was the reason I bought the book: accounts of her private eye investigations. Those consisted of a couple of mildly interesting stories, which made up approximately one-tenth of the total verbiage. What a bait-and-switch.
In False Colors, Kit gets roped into impersonating his missing twin Evelyn by their charming but slightly addle-pated mother; this is supposed to be for one evening, but Evelyn doesn't return, and the woman he was courting thinks Kit is Evelyn. Worse, Kit starts to fall for her. This is mid-rank Heyer, amusing but not reaching the heights of hilarious. (Kit could have gotten into much more sticky situations than he actually did.) The main characters are likable, but it's the supporting cast of older people who shine: the lovely, goofy mother; the formidable grandmother; the fat, wealthy dandy who has much more to him than meets the eye.