Further Lane: A Novel (Beecher Stowe and Lady Alex Dunraven Novels) - Hardcover

Brady, James

3.15

47 ratings by Goodreads

9780312155339: Further Lane: A Novel (Beecher Stowe and Lady Alex Dunraven Novels)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312155336 ISBN 13: 9780312155339

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1997

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As Another Gorgeous East Hampton season climaxes, a remarkable woman, admired by the millions who know her only through television and her books -- and cordially despised by some of those closest to her -- is found dead on the beach with a stake of privet hedge driven brutally through her heart. Who killed lifestyle guru Hannah Cutting and why? With the rich and famous of the lovely resort village among the suspects, foreign correspondent Beecher Stowe, back home at his family home on Further Lane, traces Hannah's roots while digging for clues. Competing with Stowe is a young book editor dispatched to the scene by Harry Evans of Random House to find and retrieve the tell-all manuscript on which Hannah was working when she died. This is Alix Dunraven, a member in London of Princess Di's set of "Sloane Rangers." Now Stowe and Lady Alix make for an unexpectedly sassy and stylish team as they lead an elegant but deadly romp through the Hamptons, from redneck bars to the Maidstone Country Club, from rich men's estates to the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, from surfer hangouts to the tennis courts, as all the tensions and frictions of America's famous summer playground play themselves out: Old Money vs. New, tree-huggers vs. land developers, Hollywood arrivistes vs. Establishment WASPs. As Alix and Beecher close in on why Hannah died, a great September hurricane comes boiling up the East Coast toward East Hampton's golden beaches and dune-top mansions.

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About the Author:

James Brady is a weekly columnist for Advertising Age and Parade magazines.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Again, the Ad Age columnist and novelist (Designs, 1986, etc.) relies on celebrity cameos rather than a gripping plot, producing a limp whodunit featuring an amiable Hamptons native as detective, a flighty member of British royalty as the love interest, and an ambitious millionairess as the victim. By name alone, it's clear that Beecher Stowe IV, a world-weary journalist back from a stint in Algiers, is a lifelong member of East Hampton's exclusive Maidstone Club, even if he does watch his fellow Wasps' activities with a bit of a jaundiced eye. Thus when Hannah Cutting, the relatively new owner of the grand old Warrender ``cottage'' on the beach, is found on her property with a privet- hedge spike driven through her chest, Beecher follows the investigation with interest. The suspects are many, since arriviste Hannah boasted an enemy behind every sand dune, including: her old- money ex-husband, whom she sucked dry of Hamptons Brahmin lore and then dumped; next-door neighbor Pam Phythian, with whom the victim had a falling-out during an expedition to the Himalayas; and even Hannah's own daughter, Claire, whose lust for a blue-collar eco- activist was an embarrassment to her mother. When Beecher's editor at Parade magazine assigns him a story about Hannah's life (she grew up in blue-collar Polish Town and once worked as an au pair at the mansion she later purchased), he begins to take an active part in the investigation--especially after Random House sends down the sexy British editor Alex Dunraven to locate the scandalous tell-all manuscript that the publisher had paid Hannah handsomely to create. Beecher and Alix banter, kiss, and compete to see who can more effectively bait the locals as the mystery lumbers to its predictable end--at which point the romance is consummated, the bad guy apprehended, and another fabulous Hamptons' summer is brought to an end. Chock-full of famous names and nicely nasty asides, but otherwise unsurprising. -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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