3 May 2007.
ISBN 978 0 7553 2045 5 (HB)
Fran Varady’s latest adventure sees her back in London. This time she is crusading on behalf of an old acquaintance: Edna the Bag Lady. Someone is watching Edna – someone Edna fears. Fran wants to know who and why. Ganesh, Fran’s friend, urges caution as ever, but Fran doesn’t do caution: ‘I’d have been scared too, if I’d had any sense. But . . . bad situations always draw me fatally towards them.’
But as Fran seeks Edna, so, it seems, does the watcher. Following advice from her friend Susie Duke (of Duke’s Detective Agency), Fran covers her (dyed) scarlet mop with a black Morticia Addams-type wig, follows Edna and is herself followed by the mysterious watcher who turns out to be also a private investigator, name of Duane. So far, all a bit odd but not all that ominous. Until, that is, Duane turns up in Susie’s office – dead. Further complications ensue involving Edna’s present safety and her past relationships.
Sadly, this is to be
(apparently) Fran’s last outing. Scatty, warm-hearted and with a social
conscience, always ebullient and optimistic despite the failure so far of her
acting career, she is one of the most endearing of fictional sleuths. Maybe, in
the post-fictional world, she really will achieve the starring roles she
desires.
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Reviewer: Radmila May
Other Fran Varady titles: Asking
for Trouble, Keeping Bad Company, Running Scared, Watching
Out, Mixing with Murder.
Ann Granger was born in Portsmouth where she was a pupil at the then Northern Grammar School for Girls and went from there to London University where she achieved a BA in Modern Languages (French with German). After a period spent first teaching English in France and then working in the Visa Section of British Embassies around the world. She met her husband, who was also working for the British Embassy, in Prague, and together they received postings to places as far apart as Munich and Lusaka. She is the author of the Mitchell and Markby Mysteries, the Fran Varady series and more recently the Lizzie Martin mystery series. She lives in Bicester, near Oxford.
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