Rating: 
Summary: Just begging to be made into a movie!
Review: Heroine: tall/buxom
Who in her right mind would want to date 40 men in 60 days? Greeting card designer and shop owner Wollie Shelley, that's who. Because let's face it, there's not a lot of money in the card business when your shop is located on the seedy side of L.A. The $5000 payment for participating in the dating research study would mean the world to Wollie. And as an added bonus she reveres her new boss, radio personality Dr. Cookie Lahven, and is thrilled to be assisting her with gathering material for her new book, "How to Avoid Getting Dumped All the Time".
But an attempt by Wollie to visit her mentally ill brother at a hospital puts a damper on the project in the form of a dead body. And Wollie is so worried that her brother might have had something to do with it that she avoids alerting the authorities. Instead, she allows herself to be kidnapped by an attractive man disguised as a doctor in the hopes that she can buy some time and solve the crime herself.
She crosses paths with so many bad guys along the way that she could pen her own guidebook, "How to Avoid Getting Dumped--in a River by a Mobster".
What worked for me:
I genuinely liked Wollie and found her to be a sympathetic character. I liked her kidnapper too, and thought the sexual tension between them was a lot of fun. (The pet ferret was a nice touch as well.)
The writing style and humor might not appeal to everyone, but I sure got a kick out of them.
Size-wise Wollie was very tall and on the buxom side. (It's not often I run across a book where the romance pairs a taller woman with a shorter man.)
What didn't work for me:
I was disappointed that I didn't get to know Wollie's friends a bit better. I am hoping that they get more time on center stage in the next book.
I had some trouble keeping the various characters and plotlines straight at times.
Overall:
This breezy, quirky book should go straight to the beach with you. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Warning: this book contains some coarse language and a mildly sexy scene or two.
If you liked "Dating Dead Men" you might also enjoy "Princess Charming", "Infernal Affairs", "Name Dropping", "Bet Me", "Crazy For You", "Switcheroo", theStephanie Plum mystery series, "Ain't Nobody's Bizness", "Plum Girl", "Fast Women", "Welcome to Temptation", "Faking It", the Odelia Grey mystery series, the Southern Sisters mystery series, or the Josephine Fuller mystery series.
Rating: 
Summary: She's no Stephanie Plum
Review: I bought this book based on several reviews that compared Wollie to Stephanie Plum. While it's not a bad story, not once did I laugh out loud.
I'm waiting for Ten Big Ones for my next big laugh.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Vehicle for Kozak...
Review: I enjoyed reading "Dating Dead Men" enormously. Written by actress Harley Jane Kozak over the span of several years, it would be a great movie for her to appear in as the title character.
The book works on many levels in originality and humor. The touch of the ferret is priceless! The characterizations of Woolie's friends and Ruby are really well-done.
If the book is slightly less flowing in parts, I think that is the result of being written over the course of several years. I think that the second book will come easier. All in all, a very charming first novel.
Rating:
Summary: A really good, funny book
Review: I loved it! I'm a big fan of Stephanie Plum, and although this book isn't quite as funny as Stephanie (so what book is?), I enjoyed it immensely. The characters are zany and interesting, the plot a little difficult to follow, but all in all a really good read. I'm going to keep going with the series, because I think it will get better next time. Another book I find very funny (it also is first in a series) is Deadly Diamonds, by Pamela Troutman. Also, all the books by Rex Stout, if you haven't read them (Nero Wolfe).
Rating: 
Summary: Two books in one, and that's not a good thing
Review: I was intrigued both by the title of this book and by the initial premise: the main character was participating in a national dating "study" in order to use the compensation for her own employment goals. Given this description and the title, I settled in for a light read of Wollie's dating adventures.When the murder mystery was first introduced, I was mildly annoyed. I figured it was an interesting, albeit tangential, subplot. I was dismayed to find that this was, in fact, the focus of the book, and the dating scheme was simply thrown in to add (quite paltry) comic relief to the story. Now, I enjoy a good mystery, and this wasn't a terrible attempt at writing one...of course, it wasn't stellar, either. But I never recovered from my annoyance that the dating experiment never became more than a side gag for the main characters. Furthermore, the subplot of Wollie's struggle to upgrade her shop (from, essentially, a Hallmark to a Hallmark Gold Crown store) simply read like a gimmick to carry a thread through the story. The problem, I think, is that this was really two books: a potentially witty recounting of dating struggles in today's society, and a light murder mystery. The trouble came when the author tried to combine both of these stories into one. Her editor should have forseen this problem and commissioned two separate works. This certainly doesn't qualify as the worst book I've ever read, but it has significant trouble. A suggestion to the author: write a new book from the perspective of the "scientist" doing the dating study. It could be a lovely little novel.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, witty and very deadly!
Review: I was introduced to this book when a review compared it to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. Like those novels, Dating Dead Men is humorous, has a naive and struggling heroine and has an intelligent mystery. The Plum novels are set in the down-to-earth Trenton, NJ. Ms. Kozak puts her heroine (the unlikely named Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - "Wollie") in the ritz and glamor of LA. Well, almost in the ritz and glamor - she's more on the outskirts, struggling as manager of a Welcome! Greetings card store. Alarmed by a phonecall from her brother, a resident at a local mental hospital she hurries to him, only to discover a dead body in the hospital's driveway. She quickly becomes entangled with an unlikely "doctor" Gomez Gomez and his ferret. Before long Wollie is swept into a mystery involing the mafia, strange Swedes, the three 'C's and much more besides. In the midst of all this she's trying to date 40 guys in little more than 40 days for "research" and has to impress the unimpressible Mr. Bundt who has the power to upgrade her store to Willkommen status. Needless to say, things become adequately complicated! Harley's biggest strength is in her colorful characters (sometimes a little too colorful - nobody would really have a name like Wollie!). They ooze life onto every page with a rich coating of LA character on top. Many people make an appearance in this book. At some points it becomes difficult to keep track of all the relationships between the mafiosi. This isn't a fault with the writing - our heroine is having trouble herself and often provides some useful summaries. Harley says in her afterword that this book took a long time to get written. Let's hope the next one doesn't take as long but is just as good. This is highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: She's no Stephanie Plum
Review: I was recommended this book because I have read (and loved) all of the Stephanie Plum series and supposedly this was along the same lines. Well, the positive is this book is very witty and fun. The sensitive character development, especially of Ruby and P.B., is heartwarming. Now the bad part, this book was very hard to follow. I felt like everything was going off in different directions. One reviewer nailed it, it was like reading two stories in one. There is a certain amount of flow missing in this book. I recognized the author as an actress and I like her. For a first book, not bad but hopefully she will learn from her experience and improve on her next one.
Rating:
Summary: Not to my taste but a very well written humorous mystery
Review: I will admit it. I don't particularly like humorous mysteries. I rarely find them funny and always find they lack depth. At best, they are mindless fun. Actually, DATING DEAD MEN is funnier than most and would actually be considered one of the better examples of this type of lighthearted romp through murder, madness and mayhem.
Woolie Shelley manages a greeting card shop in California. Her dream is to actually own the shop but to do this she must adhere to Welcome Cards' strict criteria of what makes a great card shop. As the book opens Wollie is being assessed as to how her shop stacks up to their high standards. As she is being reviewed, she receives a terrifying call from her brother in a mental hospital screaming murder. She plans to visit him that night but first must complete another date in her project. She must date forty men in sixty days as paid research for an author writing a book. While visiting her brother, she comes across a dead body on the way to the psychiatric hospital and is 'kidnapped' by a handsome man in a scrub suit. His name is Doc and he owns a ferret. From there things get more and more complicated.
I don't often laugh while reading this type of book. I didn't with this one either. However, I did almost smile several times. To be honest, the whole sordid affair is plain stupid. The major strength of this work is not the banal plot or lethargic pacing. It is the wacky characters that we meet along the way to the end of this book that actually reads much longer than it is. However, for the style of writing, the excellent characterizations and the subgenre that it is written (while overlooking my own prejudice) this is a very well written work.
Rating:
Summary: As LOL funny as the Plum series
Review: I've been waiting for another author to make me laugh out loud since I first read "One for the Money" and this is it! Read it and you won't be disappointed - this is the real deal.
Rating:
Summary: As LOL funny as the Plum series
Review: I've been waiting for another author to make me laugh out loud since I first read "One for the Money" and this is it! Read it and you won't be disappointed - this is the real deal.
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