It’s called What’s a Girl Gotta Do? The author is
called Sparkle. The heroine describes herself in the first paragraph
as a ‘dame’. The jacket says it’s ‘wacky’. To be honest I dreaded
picking this book up, but when I got started I didn’t put it down
again until I’d finished it.
Robin Hudson is a ‘slightly rumpled third-string reporter in Rita
Hayworth’s body’, working on a trashy TV show, recently dumped
by her husband for a much younger woman. A bizarre sequence of
events involving a fancy dress party, a tire iron and an anonymous
blackmailer lead to her arrest on suspicion of a brutal murder.
Armed only with an Epilady and a perfume atomizer spiked with
cayenne pepper, Robin sets out to clear her name and catch the
killer.
Sharp, witty and fast-paced from the first page, this is an undemanding
but thoroughly enjoyable read. There are times when the book
gives up its secrets a little too easily: incidents that are
alluded to mysteriously are fully explained five minutes later.
The suspense could have been drawn out for longer, but it’s a
small point. As the plot develops you find yourself turning the
pages as intrigued with the developments in Robin’s personal life
as in whodunnit. With her disastrous love life, hardboiled streetsmart
narration and seamy scenarios Robin Hudson reads like a US Bridget
Jones meets Raymond Chandler on the pages of the National Enquirer.
Reviewed by Pippa Wright
