Slightly Shady - Hardcover

Quick, Amanda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1587240262 ISBN 13: 9781587240263

Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc, 2001

Synopsis

Four cassettes, 6 hrs.
Performance by Elizabeth Sastre

Danger seems to follow wherever Lavinia Lake goes. Her shop in Italy is thoroughly destroyed by a stranger. Upon her return to England with her niece, she becomes the target of a blackmailer. When she goes to his home to confront him, his murdered body is what she finds. Worse, the same stranger in Italy catches her with the body.
His name is Tobias March, and he's a private investigator hired by a secret employer to capture the last surviving member of a criminal gang. The identity of that person is in a diary, now missing but last possessed by Lavinia's blackmailer, who accused her of working for the gang in Italy. She's incensed — and desperate to find the diary. If its false allegations about her ever bacomes public knowledge, her niece's one chance at a proper Season in London society would be utterly ruined.
There's only one thing to do — join forces with Tobias, who has already determined her innocence of all shady dealings. The trail to a murderer and the diary leads them all over London, from the grand home of a widowed countess and the smoky rooms of an alley pub to waxwork museums and a venerable club. For Lavinia and Tobias, what begins as a business arrangement turns to breath-stealing passion even as a ruthless villain watches them, ready to take their lives at the first opportunity.

About this title

Review:

There's something Slightly Shady about Lavinia Lake. First of all, no decent woman would go into trade, even when an unscrupulous employer leaves her stranded abroad with her young niece. But the capable Lavinia has landed on her feet, peddling dubious reproductions of ancient artifacts in Rome to earn passage home. When a madman ransacks her shop, accusing her of aiding and abetting a murderous gang of thieves, Lavinia and her niece Emeline return to London, where Lavinia once more takes lemons and makes lemonade, becoming a private investigator. In the course of her first discreet inquiry for a wealthy aristocrat with secrets to hide, Lavinia runs into her madman once more, standing over the recently deceased body of a blackmailer. Not exactly your usual beginning for a relationship, but Mr. Tobias March is hardly an ordinary man. In fact, he's quite extraordinary, Lavinia very reluctantly admits to herself. When threats to Lavinia's safety force her into an unlikely partnership with the mysterious Mr. March, the fur--and a petticoat or two--flies. A heady combination of passion and the shared thrill of the hunt for a depraved murderer may lead Lavinia and Tobias to form a partnership of a more permanent kind. Lively suspense with a healthy dose of passion, Amanda Quick's Slightly Shady is truly addictive storytelling. --Alison Trinkle

From the Inside Flap:

Amanda Quick's trademark is a bestselling combination of suspense, passion, and sparkling wit in historical tales alight with intrigue. Now she serves up the most tantalizing novel of her career as an enterprising woman allies herself with a mysterious spy, only to be caught up in a torrid brew of treachery-and temptation....
SLIGHTLY SHADY
From the moment the stranger burst into her antiquities shop in Rome, Lavinia Lake knew he was nothing but trouble. He said he was in pursuit of a killer. He swore he was only trying to save her. Yet Lavinia was convinced that Mr. Tobias March was bent instead on destroying her. When the self-described spy hustled her all the way back to England, Lavinia vowed she would find a way to repay him in full. She never dreamed that Mr. March had in fact been telling the truth, that he had been hired to track down a powerful villain. And just as his investigation was heating up, he found it complicated by the most ungovernable, exasperating-and slightly shady-woman he had ever met. Lavinia most certainly never dreamed they would meet again, forced into partnership under shocking circumstances-or that their fiery disputes would spark a sizzling desire as overwhelming as the danger they faced....

About this edition

• Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1587240262
• ISBN 13: 9781587240263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 391