Publishers Weekly
03/06/2023
Early in Isaacs’s winning second outing for Corie Geller (after 2019’s Takes One to Know One), the former FBI agent’s father, retired NYPD detective Daniel Schottland, reconnects with April Brown, whose parents died in an arson when she was five years old. Though Schottland and his colleagues never identified the arsonist, they assumed the target was April’s father, Seymour, who laundered money for the Russian mob. April—now a Rutgers University film professor obsessed with old movies—reports to Schottland that an SUV with obscured plates attempted to run her down on the school’s campus. Local authorities dismiss any connection to April’s childhood attack, but she remains unconvinced. Desperate for an escape from their “unremittingly suburban” routines and hoping to forestall another attempt on April’s life, Schottland and Corie set up an ad hoc PI office in the Gellers’s Long Island McMansion and start digging into Seymour’s sordid past. Offbeat characters, witty narration, and a winsome father-daughter dynamic complement Isaacs’s clever if madcap plot. Fans of breezy suspense will be delighted. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (May)
From the Publisher
Susan Isaacs has spent her career writing about what she once characterized as “brave dames”: assertive, self-possessed women — sometimes saddled with a neurosis or two — who were fulfilled by marriage and family but hardly defined by them, and who had a natural ability to solve murders… The thoroughly enjoyable plot brims with misdirection and red herrings. And like other Isaacs characters, Corie Geller is wonderful company for the reader.” —Sarah Weinman, New York Times
“Offbeat characters, witty narration, and a winsome father-daughter dynamic complement Isaacs’s clever if madcap plot. Fans of breezy suspense will be delighted.”—Publishers Weekly
“As a narrator, [Corie] is a formidable raconteur, as generous with details as Proust, as full of anecdote as a suburban Scheherazade. She and her father make a good team, pooling resources and pulling in a host of ex-colleagues and guest experts to assist them. They need all the help they can get to combat a most determined villain and save their brave and endearing client.” —Wall Street Journal
Praise for Susan Isaacs:
“I can think of no other novelist—popular or highbrow—who consistently celebrates female gutsiness, brains and sexuality. She’s Jane Austen with a schmear.” —NPR’s Fresh Air
“A witty, wry observer of contemporary life." —The Washington Post
“Nobody does smart, gutsy, funny, sexy women better than Susan Isaacs.” —The Washington Post
“The women who inhabit Isaacs’ books are smart, sexy, a little snarky, and filled with some serious chutzpah.” —Rachel Martin NPR’s Weekend Edition
“Ms. Isaacs is a witty author, but comedy gives way to terror as Corie’s inevitable confrontation with her dangerous quarry nears. All the foreshadowing and presaging pays off in spades, and the scenes that tie up loose ends are a pleasure to read.”—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
“What is it that makes Susan Isaacs’ books so delicious to read? She’s funny, for starters. And that humor combined with romance and old-fashioned murder mystery tickles every feel-good bone in our bodies. Her characters are whole and flawed and lovable, and you want only the best for them, even as you ardently wish to find them in danger — repeatedly — along the way.”—New York Newsday
“There are so many layers — and thrilling twists and turns — that you won’t want to put it down.”—InTouch
June 2023 - AudioFile
Narrator Jennifer O'Donnell perfectly embodies former FBI agent Corie Geller in the second installment in this series. With a blend of intelligence, sassiness, compassion, and sarcastic humor, O'Donnell's performance brings Geller to life. She and her father, a retired NYPD detective, investigate an attack on April Brown, the only survivor of a twenty-year-old arson case that claimed her parents' lives. O'Donnell expertly distinguishes between the numerous personalities involved and convincingly portrays the characters, including men. Listeners are treated to a totally engaging mystery as Geller and her father delve into the life and death of April's father, Seymour Brown, a money launderer for the Russian mob. From start to finish, this audiobook offers an immersive listening experience. E.Q. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-14
In this follow-up to Takes One To Know One (2019), an ex–FBI agent and her retired cop father team up again to solve a homicide cold case.
Still suffering PTSD symptoms from the last FBI case she consulted on, Corie Geller has settled into a quiet post-pandemic life on Long Island as an “underemployed suburban wife and mother” with her husband, daughter, and her Queens-based parents, who moved into the guest suite during the initial lockdown. But when Corie’s father, former NYPD detective Dan Schottland, is contacted by April Brown, the sole survivor of a two-decades-old unsolved arson that killed her parents, Corie gets pulled into helping him investigate a potential murder attempt on April—someone driving a dark SUV tried to run down the film studies professor on the Rutgers University campus. Was the attack related to the murders of Seymour Brown, a brutal man who laundered money for the Russian mob, and his wife, Kim? More than 40 years ago Isaacs burst onto the publishing scene with the bestselling Compromising Positions, a comic mystery mocking suburban mores. Unfortunately, she breaks no new ground here; her dull storyline is slowed down by the constant observational digressions of the characters. Everyone talks, talks, talks, and they don’t always stick to the point, as in the conversation about Seymour’s memorial service, which devolves into a comparison of funeral rites among different ethnic and religious groups, much to Dan’s (and the reader’s) annoyance. While true to life, this doesn’t make for stimulating reading. Likewise, Isaacs’ noted snarky humor now feels stale. The action only picks up in the book’s final third, and by then the reader doesn’t much care.
Only for die-hard Isaacs fans, who will get the title’s Jim Croce reference.
