Thu 1 Jan 2026
JOAN HESS – Strangled Prose. Claire Malloy #1. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1986. Ballantine, paperback: 1st printing thus, February 1987.
A reception for an author of romantic novels at Claire Malloy’s bookstore is destroyed when it is discovered that several characters in the lady’s latest epic have very close counterparts in real life. At the end of the gathering, the lady is dead. Lt. Rosen helps investigate.
The book is a lot of fun, perhaps too much so. The witty repartee us all but endless. Everyone is a master of it, and it (eventually) is overwhelming, In spite of the barbs, Claire and Rosen are attracted to each other, Big surprise.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.3, February 1988.
January 1st, 2026 at 9:53 pm
There were in all 20 books in the series, with the final one appearing in 2015. It will be of no use asking me how serious the romance between the leading lady sleuth and her policeman friend became, because I don’t remember ever reading another one.
I read this because Claire Malloy was a bookstore owner, and that caught my eye. I seem to have enjoyed this one, but cozies were never in high priority, even when I was reading mysteries as well as SF at a rate of 2 or 3 a week.