{"id":6192,"date":"2025-01-18T07:35:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T15:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6192"},"modified":"2025-01-18T07:35:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T15:35:55","slug":"kemper-donovan-loose-lips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kemper-donovan-loose-lips\/","title":{"rendered":"Kemper Donovan: Loose Lips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ghostwriter #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I really enjoy this quirky new series featuring a nameless ghostwriter as the main character.\u00a0 In the first book, the writer trailed a Hilary Clinton-esque figure and wound up solving a crime with her.\u00a0 In this follow up, she\u2019s now an established professional after publishing an account of her previous adventure and is recruited for a private cruise for wannabe writers.\u00a0 She\u2019s the \u201cmystery writer\u201d instructor, along with a poet, a memoirist, and an ultra successful romance writer.\u00a0 We eventually learn her pen name, Belle Currer, which certainly makes things simpler from a logistical point of view.<\/p>\n

The cruise has been set up by a former school friend of Belle\u2019s, Payton, who has subsequently gone on to fame and glory. Both women are astonished when the third member of their grad school triumvirate, Flora, shows up, as she\u2019s suing Payton for stealing the book concept she claims she\u2019s been working on for decades.\u00a0 They soon learn she\u2019s only appeared on scene in an effort to make Payton miserable.<\/p>\n

Donovan does a nice job setting things up, both in terms of the ship, the writing conference, and the tensions and rivalries between the characters.\u00a0 The cast includes Joan Chen, who wants to be a writer but is serving as the ship\u2019s doc (she and Belle meet when Belle has a bout of seasickness early on), Payton\u2019s chic wife, Nicole, Payton\u2019s bitchy assistant, Jackson, as well as various women attending the conference.<\/p>\n

When things go south after a first mysterious death, Belle and Doctor Joan unite as a detective team.\u00a0 As she did in the first instalment, Belle willingly assumes the \u201cHastings\u201d role and allows Joan to take the lead.\u00a0 As they\u2019re at sea with no visible security (everyone signed a waiver before signing up), the amateur detection seems perfectly plausible.\u00a0 This is a classic setting, of course, and the ship provides a \u201cclosed circle,\u201d that is, someone on board must be the guilty party.\u00a0 As more deaths occur, Joan and Belle are hot on the trail.<\/p>\n

Donovan is a witty and sometimes unexpected writer, a sharp observer of human interaction and character, and pretty funny as well, his skills renewing a very traditional mode of storytelling.\u00a0 With the set up he seems to be adopting \u2013 like a traditional ghost, \u201cBelle\u201d the ghost writer can go just about anywhere and remain kind of invisible \u2013 giving Donovan lots of leeway in terms of her finding more murders to solve.\u00a0 The resolution here is quite ingenious, and as in all the best golden age style mysteries, the clues were right there for the reader to discover. These are fun reads which also make you use your brain.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ghostwriter #2 I really enjoy this quirky new series featuring a nameless ghostwriter as the main character.\u00a0 In the first book, the writer trailed a Hilary Clinton-esque figure and wound up solving a crime with her.\u00a0 In this follow up, she\u2019s now an established professional after publishing an account of her previous adventure and is … 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":[1547,1544,162,1961,1276,1962,1664],"class_list":["post-6192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-ghostwriter","tag-kemper-donovan","tag-kensington-books","tag-loose-lips","tag-robin-agnew","tag-sea-cruise","tag-writers-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192","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=6192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6194,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192\/revisions\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}