Merchant of Venus - Hardcover

Hart, Ellen

3.97

292 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312266189 ISBN 13: 9780312266189

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2001

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Jane Lawless is a woman at a crossroads - her lover has left, she has finally recovered from a vicious attack sustained last year, and the holidays are closing in. With no one to help her ring in the new year, Jane reluctantly agrees to accompany her good friend Cordelia Thorn on a peculiar holiday trip: Cordelia's estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn, has asked them to attend her wedding.

Octavia getting married is no surprise - she's done it three times before - but her candidate for hubby #4 certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive eighty-three-year-old retired Hollywood director, a relic from the golden age of Tinseltown with a controversial past. No one can understand how the two met, much less fell in love. When the bodies start to drop, Jane realizes it might not be love at all that brought the young diva and the aged director together, but something much deeper, and perhaps more sinister.

Delving deep into film history, Jane finds unsettling connections between Roland and a murder that was never solved. Finding out what happened 40 years ago could be the key to unlock the mystery of Octavia's curious marriage, but laying bare such long-buried secrets also promises grave consequences for everyone involved.

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Review:

Jane Lawless has just broken up with her lover and is barely recovered from injuries suffered in her last adventure (Hunting the Witch), but that doesn't stop her from accompanying her pal Cordelia to the rundown but still magnificent Connecticut estate known as Innishannon. It is there that Cordelia's estranged sister, actress Octavia Thorne, is about to marry the reclusive but legendary movie director Roland Lester. Cordelia may be her best friend, but Lawless, the Minneapolis restaurateur-sleuth who's starred in several Ellen Hart cozies, has no idea why the Thorne sisters have been strangers to each other since their mother's death eight years before. And Cordelia herself is just as baffled by Octavia's reasons for marrying the 80- year-old Lester.

A mansion full of picaresque characters keeps the reader guessing after first Lester and then the young documentary producer who's on hand to chronicle the wedding (and, incidentally, to solve the mystery of her own grandfather's murder in the long-ago Hollywood days when he and Lester knew each other) are murdered. Most of the guests had a motive: Gracie, the young Internet entrepreneur whose plans to turn Innishannon into a huge theme park--Gracieland--will be drastically reduced if Olivia inherits after she marries Lester; Verna Lange, the faded but still glamorous actress who costarred with Lew Wallace in Roland Lester's greatest hits back in the '50s; Christian Wallace, Lew's son and Gracie's lover; and Hiram Thorne, Octavia and Cordelia's father, who knows a secret about his daughter's fianc� that may derail the couple's plans.

This deft, well-written mystery is light on blood and gore but heavy on Hollywood history and gossip. Did you know that Clark Gable's leading ladies hated to kiss him because of his denture breath? Hart has done her homework and turned in another smart, lively page-turner that will delight her many fans and probably win her some new ones, especially those who enjoy tales of Tinseltown in its heyday. --Jane Adams

About the Author:

Ellen Hart, six-time Lambda Award winner and two-time Minnesota Book Award winner, is the author of nine previous Jane Lawless mysteries and the Sophie Greenway mystery series. Entertainment Weekly magazine recently called her one of the "top novelists in the cultishly popular gay mystery genre." She lives in Minneapolis.

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