Dead Clever: A Lily Pascale Mystery

Rating:
Summary: not up to the hype
Review: I bought this book, in fact- after reading a couple of reviews. But I'm a little perplexed by the descriptions of this novel as "hip" and "trendy." I was expecting something a bit more along the lines of Bridget Jones in a mystery format from the descriptions, but in fact the protagonist Lily is on the pedantic side, and unless listening to Radiohead is the sole qualifyer, she didn't seem very hip at all for a twentysomething. She comes across as a thinks-she-knows-it-all, and the mystery plot wasn't all that well executed. There are too many inconsistencies, and although the setting is nicely done and the writing isn't bad, there are far better hip young Brit sleuths out there.

Try Lauren Henderson or Liz Evans, for example, or Sarah Lacey's File Under: series. Another good one is Anabel Donald's Notting Hill series- Alex is much more hip than Lily!

Rating:
Summary: Great fun!
Review: Lily Pascale is a great new character. She's brash, funny, opinionated, and she doesn't let anyone else get her down. I like the fact that she strikes out on her own. She's got more brains than Bridget Jones!

This book is alot of fun and a must read! I can't wait for the next book in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Dead Clever
Review: Lily Pascale is a young woman who falls into her crime solving role. After a date with a handsome fellow professor, she finds herself light-headed from a few too many sips of alcohol and sleeps over at his flat--strictly plantonic! When her would-be lover disappears, leading the entire community to assume he's responsible for the gruesome campus murder, Lily is determined to prove his innocence.

Lily is amusing, realistic and easy to identify with. Unsure of her career path, she ends up teaching after leaving her straying live-in in London--and an "acting career" going nowhere. With demons in her closet and a host of sad memories tied to her hometown, she quickly wins our sympathy and interest.

While the plot itself is far-fetched, you needn't let that get in that way--anymore than you let the plot of Shelley's Frankenstein bother you. The pacing is good and the book holds your interest. I forsee Lily growing over the course of her books. Nice effort here.

Rating:
Summary: fictional chain smoking
Review: Maybe I've become too sensitized to smoking, but I found the number of references to lighting cigarettes and smoking a total distraction, sometimes more than once on a page. Like dripping water or a tic, I couldn't concentrate on the plot for waiting for the next cigarette. I've noticed that this occurs occasionally, usually in first books, and it doesn't seem to me that it adds anything in the way of the plot and not even the character or the atmosphere (except that it's polluted).

Rating:
Summary: smart and witty
Review: This first of three Lily Pascale mysteries is (how can I resist?) dead clever. Young Lily leaves her cheating boyfriend and dead-end London bartending job for some R and R in her small hometown in Devon where she promptly lands the perfect part-time job teaching crime fiction at the local university. Except one of her students has been gruesomely murdered. And some of the others are acting peculiar. And her new romantic interest comes under suspicion. Then the student who saw the whole thing (as we know, but Lily doesn't) seems to be going crazy.

Lily begins asking questions and before she knows it, she's investigating, withholding evidence and generally digging a deep hole she's only going to climb out of by solving the crime, a murder or two and a few close calls later. The plot gets a little wobbly but keeps moving, the characters are well drawn, the setting is lovingly rendered and the writing is crisp, fast-paced and humorous - though not quite as smart as it starts out to be. A promising beginning for a hip young protagonist.