Maggie By The Book
-
- $3.99
-
- $3.99
Publisher Description
Book Two in the Maggie Kelly Mystery Series by New York Times Bestselling Author Kasey Michaels.
Publishers Weekly: “An audacious premise with deliciously funny results.”
Best selling mystery author Maggie Kelly has a problem, and his name is Alexandre Blake, Viscount St. Just, who until recently resided in her creative mind and those best selling books set during the time of the English Regency.
But now, somehow, he's out and about, residing in her New York apartment with her, along with his faithful sidekick (and his comedy relief in those same books), Sterling Balder.
Alex Blakely (his new name) is not happy living off his creator's largesse, and sees a chance to improve his fortunes by becoming a contestant in a Cover Model contest that will top off the We Are Romance (WAR) convention to be held in Manhattan. To do that, he has registered Maggie, Sterling and himself for the convention, an affair Maggie has deliberately avoided for five years.
Since she still believes Alex and Sterling aren't ready to be let off the leash, as it were, she reluctantly attends with them. Within moments of their arrival at the convention hotel, the mischief begins, and within days, those pranks against WAR members give way to murder, one Alex naturally decides he, the great amateur Regency sleuth, will solve.
Maggie had picked a bad week to stop smoking...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Romance and cozy fans will welcome this cross-genre sequel to Michaels's Maggie Needs an Alibi (2002), with its original premise, sympathetic if reluctant heroine and lively supporting cast. New Yorker Maggie Kelly, a former author of Regency romances who now writes historical mysteries, has an unusual house guest, her fictional Regency-era hero, Alexandre Blake, Viscount Saint Just (aka Alex Blakely). What's more, he has registered her for the annual conference in Manhattan of We Are Romance (WAR), a romance writers' group with whom she's had past differences. Maggie grudgingly attends and fronts Alex and his friend, Mary Louise, in the cover-model contest. Tensions run high, and participants head for home as a series of increasingly dangerous pranks culminates in the death of one of WAR's most notorious members. Alex, a sleuth in his own fictional world, is determined to unmask the killer at the fancy dress ball, with or without the help of his creator, who's distracted by the reappearance of her NYPD detective heartthrob, Steve Wendell. Michaels, a romance writer herself and a pro at juxtaposing unlikely characters, keeps the sparks flying between Maggie and Alex, who serves as an admirable foil for her irritation. A surfeit of amusing secondary characters slows the action in the middle, but the plot picks up at the end with the unmasking of the surprise culprit.
