Slow Squeeze - Hardcover

Pugh, Dianne G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671778439 ISBN 13: 9780671778439

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1994

Synopsis

Iris Thorne, now her firm's senior investment counselor, takes on the portfolio of Barbie Stringfellow, a brash and bawdy Atlanta widow, only to find herself framed for her client's murder

About this title

Reviews

As a guest on a TV talk show, L.A. investment counselor Iris Thorne, introduced in Cold Call, reiterates events of her first adventure, including the embezzlement of a still-missing $1 million. Soon she is approached by potential investor Barbie Stringfellow. Initially wary of the older woman who dresses in signature purple and speaks in a honey-toned Southern accent, Iris finds her suspicions dispelled when Barbie gives her money to invest and begins to act like a friend. Meanwhile, Iris's fellow investment counselor Art Silva, longing to own his own nightclub and seeing Barbie, in addition to his uncle, as a source of revenue, begins to wine and dine the woman. Wily Barbie gets Iris drunk and finds out where the embezzled funds are; she has Art give her his uncle's earnest money in the nightclub venture-and vanishes. Days later, her body is found at a posh California coast resort. Who is the killer and who has the loot? While the answers may surprise some readers, an unfocused and unnecessarily complicated plot confuse the story so much that few will care, despite Pugh's first-rate prose and characterizations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Who's going to strangle blowsy Mississippi flower Barbie Stringfellow on Easter weekend and leave her body, shorn of a superfluous pinky and negligeed in yards of purple satin, in the cabin she's rented in central California's exclusive Mariah Lodge? Flashback to the beginning of the year, when the long countdown to Barbie's death begins with the cheerful Barbie turning up on investment counselor Iris Thorne's L.A. doorstep with $50,000 to invest and the promise of much, much more. Before you know it, Barbie is smothering Iris with phone calls, gifts, and affection when Iris really needs them--her sometime lover, John Somers (LAPD), has dumped her for his ex-wife and daughter--and has let Iris's hungry colleague, Art Silva, talk her into helping him bankroll the Latin nightclub of his dreams. Even before she starts coming on sexually to both Art and Iris, Barbie sounds too good to be true, and of course she is: She's after the half-million dollars in hot money Iris stashed at the end of her first brush with sudden death (Cold Call, 1993). So far, so nasty, and it's great fun watching Pugh put Barbie through her vulgar, good-hearted parvenu routine as Iris is slowly tumbling to Barbie's designs on her. Once Barbie starts cooling in that satin, though, the life goes out of the book as well (Barbie quick is more fun than Barbie dead)--enjoy her con while you can. So brightly written and fleetly paced that you barely notice how gossamer thin the plot is. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

More tightly written than Cold Call (Pocket Bks., 1993), Pugh's second title looks once again at L.A. investment manager Iris Thorne, whose televised reference to unrecovered embezzled funds attracts a masterful female con artist. "Barbara" presents herself as a wealthy widow with money to invest. She catches Iris's attention and that of a Latino co-worker who wants to open his own nightclub. As in her previous work, the author gives subplot space to sexual harassment, racism, and failed relationships. A relatively easy and straightforward plot, then, told with verve. For most fiction collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671778439
• ISBN 13: 9780671778439
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312