Maggie Needs an Alibi - Hardcover

Michaels, Kasey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786247657 ISBN 13: 9780786247653

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2002

Synopsis

Mystery novelist Maggie Kelly, who must deal with the arrival of detective Viscount Saint Just and his inept sidekick--fictional characters who have suddenly become very real--finds her life thrown into turmoil when she is accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Prolific historical romance writer Michaels (The Hopechest Bride) breaks into a new genre, thanks to an audacious premise with deliciously funny results. Maggie Kelly, midlist writer of historical romance, got dumped by her publisher when her sales figures didn't rise fast enough, so she reinvented herself as a mystery writer. Making use of her historical background, she created a Regency aristocrat-detective, Alexandre Blake, Viscount Saint Just, giving him an endearing, bumbling sidekick, Sterling Balder. Having quickly become a bestseller, Maggie is polishing up her latest when suddenly her two characters step out of her imagination and into her life. At first she thinks she's hallucinating, but she rapidly realizes that Saint Just and Balder really have come to life. It's one thing to write about the adventures of a gorgeous, arrogant and condescending hero; it's another entirely to have to live day to day with the man himself. When Maggie's former lover and current publisher, Kirk Toland, dies after eating a dinner Maggie prepared for him, Maggie is the chief suspect in a very nasty murder mystery for which she can't write the ending. Predictably, Saint Just insists on playing hero and trying to solve the murder, while Maggie tries to keep anyone from figuring out who (and what) he really is. Michaels handles it all with great aplomb, gaily satirizing the current state of publishing, slowly building the romantic tension between Maggie and her frustratingly real hero, and providing plenty of laughs for the reader.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Michaels leaves the romance world behind and enters the realm of mystery and fantasy with an implausible plot that somehow works superbly. Maggie Kelly is a former historical romance writer who now has a string of best-selling historical mysteries featuring Viscount Saint Just, the Sherlock Holmes of the Regency era, and his rotund sidekick, Sterling Balder. Margaret's characters inexplicably escape from her imagination and appear in the flesh in her New York City apartment. She has trouble believing that they're real, but they appear exactly as she has written them, and other people can see and hear them. To further complicate her already overloaded life, her former boyfriend cum publisher becomes seriously ill at her apartment, and she becomes the prime suspect in his imminent demise. Saint Just sees this as an opportunity to use his sleuthing skills, but fictional Regency techniques don't translate well in modern times. Readers who suspend disbelief will relish Michaels' clever and highly amusing mystery. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0786247657
• ISBN 13: 9780786247653
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 556