Review: The Agency
In Sunday's Baltimore Sun, read a review of The Agency by Ally O'Brien. Carole Goldberg, a former books editor at The Hartford Courant, calls the book "a delicious mash-up of chick-lit and thriller." Excerpts from her review:
If you have hitherto regarded literary agents as mousy types, Ally O’Brien will change your view. ... Chief among these miscreants is our heroine, Tess Drake — smart, ambitious, impulsive and sexy, and possessed of a singularly dirty mouth and snarky attitude. She’s also a bit slutty, as she will tell you.
Repeatedly. This gets her into plenty of hot water, but she relishes splashing around in it. That is, until she makes the mistake of falling in love. Tess is not the only piquant female character. ... There is Cosima, who hates Tess and takes over the agency where they both work when its head, Lowell Bardwright, is found dead after what looks like a session of erotic asphyxiation gone wrong. ...
The plot turns on whether Tess can outwit Cosima and successfully launch her own agency after Lowell’s death. It is convoluted and clever enough to keep you guessing about who wants to help her and who wants to ruin her, and happily, the answers are not obvious.
The authors offer X-Acto-sharp dialogue, steamy sex scenes, a lot of skullduggery and a heroine more appealing when she’s naughty than when she’s nice. Let’s hope they have a good literary agent, because readers are going to want more.
By the way, "Ally O’Brien" is not one person, but two. According to the publisher, one is an "internationally best-selling author of suspense novels," while the other is an "entertainment agent based in London."
Comments
It's interesting that Ally O'Brien is 2 people - I often wonder how people write a book jointly. I'm looking forward to reading this one.
Posted by: Kathy | February 28, 2009 8:35 AM