{"id":5524,"date":"2024-01-22T04:59:50","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T12:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5524"},"modified":"2024-01-22T04:59:50","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T12:59:50","slug":"kemper-donovan-the-busy-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kemper-donovan-the-busy-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Kemper Donovan: The Busy Body"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This yummy book is centered on a ghostwriter (never named) who gets a dream assignment: she\u2019s to collaborate with Dorothy Gibson, a Hilary Clinton-esque figure who has just lost a presidential election and has retreated to her home in Maine. \u00a0The ghostwriter informs the reader that meeting a subject has to involve some chemistry or it just won\u2019t work, but she means to accept this assignment before she steps foot in the door, and the two women in fact hit it off.<\/p>\n

This is a plot driven book that\u2019s governed by character.\u00a0 The author obviously has a love for golden age mysteries and makes frequent references to Poirot, Marple, and Inspector Alleyn, but it\u2019s the budding friendship between the two women that powers the novel.\u00a0 As the ghostwriter accompanies Dorothy around town, Dorothy is frequently met by voters\/fans who don\u2019t quite know how to react but want to make sure she knows they voted for her.\u00a0 It\u2019s poignant. The way Dorothy reacts is matter of fact and friendly, and you only see the cracks when she\u2019s alone with the ghostwriter or her assistant. She also works nonstop, to the exhaustion of the writer, who cannot believe her energy.<\/p>\n

While at the liquor store buying wine one night, they encounter a woman who talks Dorothy\u2019s ear off and insists on a selfie. Dorothy is gracious but a bit annoyed.\u00a0 She thinks no more of it until the news of the woman\u2019s suicide hits the local news.\u00a0 Dorothy and the ghostwriter decide to head to the funeral, held at the woman\u2019s rental home, known as the \u201cCrystal Palace\u201d which apparently looks like an ice cube in the middle of the forest.\u00a0 It\u2019s straight out of Knives Out.<\/em><\/p>\n

As Dorothy and the ghostwriter work the party, the writer is begged by the widower\u2019s assistant to ask Dorothy to speed up the medical examiner\u2019s report.\u00a0 Dorothy indeed does and what emerges is that the woman\u2019s death was not a suicide, but a murder.\u00a0 She also decides, to the intense annoyance of the local police \u2013 who have a bit of a problem trying to control the behavior of a former presidential candidate \u2013 to investigate.<\/p>\n

The investigation itself is completely golden age, and while the clues are there, it\u2019s an astute reader who will catch them all and solve the crime along with Dorothy.\u00a0 I loved Dorothy\u2019s intelligence and the way she gets to the heart of things in her investigation.\u00a0 The ghostwriter is often a step or two behind.\u00a0 The social observations in this novel are funny, astute, well observed, and memorable, which is also very golden age.\u00a0 To me Agatha Christie was a great observer of social milieu and status with a humorous and cutting edge, and Donovan shares this quality with her.<\/p>\n

This book was a full on reading love fest as far as this reader was concerned, with a slight caveat when it came to the ending. I wasn\u2019t sure about the writer\u2019s ultimate choice at the end of the novel.\u00a0 This is the work of a witty and intelligent writer, however, and I can\u2019t recommend it more highly.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This yummy book is centered on a ghostwriter (never named) who gets a dream assignment: she\u2019s to collaborate with Dorothy Gibson, a Hilary Clinton-esque figure who has just lost a presidential election and has retreated to her home in Maine. \u00a0The ghostwriter informs the reader that meeting a subject has to involve some chemistry or … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1547,1544,162,333,1546,1545,68],"class_list":["post-5524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-ghostwriter","tag-kemper-donovan","tag-kensington-books","tag-maine","tag-presidential-candidate","tag-the-busy-body","tag-traditional-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5526,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions\/5526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}