[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]

MISSING MARLENE by Evan Marshall Kensington Books, May 1999 309 pages $5.99 ISBN: 1575665557

Jane Stuart has been guilted by an old college friend into using said friend's daughter Marlene as the nanny for Jane's son Nick. This turns out to be a bad idea, since Marlene is "far too self-involved to be charged with the welfare of another person", and drop-dead gorgeous besides. Jane is working herself up to giving Marlene a polite heave-ho when Marlene disappears. Of course, this does not occur at an opportune time, as if there could be such a thing.

Jane is struggling to keep her agency afloat "with what had previously been gravy: her roster of about thirty writers of genre fiction -- mysteries, romances, horror novels, and the like." The agency has been skating on the thin edge of failure since Jane's husband Kenneth had been killed by an inattentive produce truck driver. Her one "big" author's latest book is not doing well; his manuscript is dreck and he won't consider a rewrite. She misses Kenneth fiercely.

The "guilt fairy" is great friends with Jane. Jane didn't like Marlene from the very beginning, so she feels guilty for not keeping a better eye on her friend's daughter. She feels guilty that Nick had to put up with Marlene. She feels guilty for not being able to find Marlene, for not being able to get better deals for her authors, for putting up with the crap that Roger Haines (her big author) keeps dishing out, for possibly taking advantage of her new (and wonderful) nanny Florence, for not being home enough, for not doing enough at the office. You know - woman of the 90's guilt.

Jane spends a lot of time trying to find Marlene. This involves going into seedy bars and dealing with some vivid characters: Marlene's nasty ex-boyfriend, a man who would like to have been Marlene's boyfriend, and an unattractrive woman who insists she is Marlene's best friend, as well as the snooty neighbor across the street, and Marlene's best friend Zena in New York who is never available. There are other characters, Daniel and Florence in particular, who are certainly more pleasant than the people Jane meets in her hunt for Marlene.

Jane is persistant and thorough. She thinks about what she finds out. She gets side-tracked now and then; it wouldn't be a good story if she didn't. Eventually, she does figure out what happened to Marlene, and why. The sub-plots are, for the most part, resolved; the ones that aren't will probably turn up in another book. I hope so. Evan Marshall plays fair with the reader; I could have figured this out from the clues given. Winky the cat is not a pivotal character, not does he provide the one clue that solves the puzzle.

I will read more of Evan Marshall's work, particularly if I'm not in the mood for weighty and ponderous. A nice book for a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, October 2002

[ Top ]

QUICK SEARCH:

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)

[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]