fajrdrako | A Body to Die For...

A Body to Die For is a mystery novel by Kate White. It was to its disadvantage that I listened to it on audiotape after the brilliant and imaginative mystery Masquerade by Walter Satterthwait, and it compared badly.

See, the protagonist/sleuth Bailey Weggins was a bit of a bore. Worse, the plot pulled a twist that I've pretty much hated every time I've come across it. For those who don't mind spoilers... one of the characters is a good looking homicide detective who is in charge of the case Bailey is involved in. She is attracted to him (despite having a boyfriend back in New York). They kiss - it doesn't go beyond that, but it might, until she figures out that he is nasty killer and he almost kills her, too.

I like sexy cops (cf. Joe Morelli, for example). I think of this as "The Eyes of Laura Mars" trick, in which Tommy Lee Jones turned out to be the murderer - I didn't like it then, I don't like it now. I want these homicide detectives to be heroes, whether they get the girl or not. I wonder how many real-life homicide detectives have turned out to be murderers. It seems implausible to me. And even if the attractive-guy-the-sleuth sleeps with isn't a cop, I don't like it when he turns out to be the killer, unless it's really well set up in the plot. I came across this with a Sarah Paretsky novel too, and it wasn't set up well enough to suit me.

At the end of the tape there was an interview with the author Kate White about how and why she wrote the book, how she identifies with rime-journalist Bailey, and so on. I always enjoy interviews with writers. This one annoyed me by not giving a capsule bio of the author but talking about her career as an editor and so on. Now, I had no idea who Kate White is or was: it finally emerged that she was the editor of Cosmopolitan. I thought they should have mentioned that before they talked about how she juggled writing and editing careers, what high-profile work she has, and so on. Maybe everyone knows Kate White's name but me. I noticed that in the book she occasionally mentions celebrities I've never heard of; on the whole, I did much better in recognizing the names of personages in Paris in 1923 in Masquerade than the 21st century Americans in A Body To Die For.

I didn't like the voice of the woman who read the novel, either. Kate Walsh. She had an oddly flat intonation. I might have enjoyed the book more if I'd read it in print.