BOOK REVIEW: DANGEROUS ADMISSIONS by Jane O'Connor
Haven't found a good book for the back-to-school madness yet? Well, do I have a book for you! It's today's blog tour book, DANGEROUS ADMISSIONS: Secrets of a Closet Slueth by Jane O'Connor.There are a few reasons why I am touting this book as a fabulous fall read--but mostly it is because the main character Miranda "Rannie" Bookman was so down to earth. And funny. And not for one iota attempting to become an crime investigator. In fact, she completely falls into this role in the book because she is a mother that is trying to protect her son. It makes for a fantastic believeable read that you really shouldn't miss.
Beyond Rannie, there are a whole cast of loveable characters. Particularly her son Nate, the girl of his dreams Olivia and then some "popular" but viscious high school friends The Lilies (Lily B. and Lily G) and Elliot (think Heathers and you'll get their sarcastic wit). Jane completely grabbed their adolescence and ran with it. In fact, I grew up in an area far from New York City but, the insecurities of that age are universal and Jane didn't miss one of them. Even with the teenagers in families that have a bit of money to throw around.
And again, Rannie. I love her. Not only is she believable in the role as of mother, well, she's a person. With a past. And it haunts her and we, as readers, believe every ounce of it. And I mean not only her divorce, but sex life. And she doesn't hide her premiscuous past. That being said, there is a steamy love interest, definitely some spicy sces, and a reunion of sorts with an ex-husband. How fun is that?
Honsetly, I loved the book. It was fun, funky, believeable and had so many plot twists and turns... well, it kept me reading for two whole days. Here's the official blurb (but please stick around, an interview with Jane O'Connor herself will follow):
Miranda "Rannie" Bookman—43, divorced mother of two, with a recent love life consisting of a long string of embarrassingly brief encounters—is beginning to feel like a dangling participle: connected to nothing. Her career as a copyeditor is down the toilet (she makes one little slip—a missing "l" from the last word in the title of the Nancy Drew classic The Secret of the Old Clock—and suddenly she's Publishing Enemy #1!), so she's been forced to take any gig she can get. And that means giving tours at the Chapel School, the ultra-exclusive, ultra-expensive, private academy that her children attend. Certainly not the most interesting of employments . . . at least until someone stumbles across the dead body of the Director of College Admissions.
Investigating a murder was never in her job description, but with her soon-to-be-college-bound boy Nate a prime suspect, Rannie has little choice. Besides, who better to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s than a self-proclaimed "language cop"? Her diligence might even lead her to a brand-new love. Or to a killer. Or to another corpse—hopefully not her own.
Isn't that a hook that grabs you? Really, they had me at the missing "l" in the Nancy Drew title.
Now if that blurb doesn't grab you enough, please join me in welcoming Jane to the blog! She was wonderfully kind to answer a few questions for me--and after you read them you will agree--that will completely have you convinced you need to go out and grab yourself this book (and her next one).
Hi Jane! It is such a pleasure to have you here! I am so glad to have had a chance to read you first adult novel DANGEROUS ADMISSIONS! It's smart, fun, fast, fall read... that had you guessing until the end. My favorite part (aside from a copyeditor that had to correct grammar throughout), is that Rannie doesn't intend from the beginning to be a detective. Nope, she's just a concerned mother. That little detail definitely made her character believable and down-to-earth.
But let me not waste too much of your time, on to the interview questions!
1. First, an obvious question, with all of your success writing the FANCY NANCY children's book series, why an adult fiction novel? Why now?
The truth is I started writing Dangerous Admissions before the first Fancy Nancy book. I am an incredibly slow writer so it took me eons to finish the mystery. I sent it to agents right at the same time the first FN hit stores in December 05.>
2. Your main character, Rannie has at least one trait of yours--her eye (or ear) for grammar since you both share a background in editing. What other traits do you and Rannie share? And could you see yourself, if put in the same situation as Rannie, as a closet sleuth? Would finding the detail(s) that everyone else missed be your advantage over others?
Yes, like Rannie, I love language and words (actually, Fancy Nancy is a vocab devotee too!) Mistakes do jump out at me and often in weird situations. Last weekend my family paid a yearly visit to the cemetery to say 'hi' to our loved ones and I noticed that there was a hyphen missing on my uncle's headstone. It said: Died in his seventy seventh year. It bothered me -- of course, everybody else thinks I'm crazy.
3. Being a writer myself, I am always fascinated by the whys and hows of the book ideas (the stories behind the stories). So would you mind sharing with us how you came up with the idea for DANGEROUS ADMISSIONS? What was the spark that started this particular story?
When our sons had to apply to college, my husband and I both went loco (there, I said it…not ‘stressed out’ or ‘anxious’ but truly ‘loco’). We acted as if we were the ones waiting for the proverbial fat envelopes. Come acceptance day in early April, I remember that the mail was all I thought about. (This was pre- the day when kids can log on and find out if they’re in.) And almost as soon as we dropped our younger son off at his freshman dorm, the title for a book – Dangerous Admissions – popped into my head. It would revolve around the nasty doings at a high-pressure Manhattan private school on the Upper West Side, not all that different from the one both our sons attended for the full K-12 ride. Although the college guidance counselor at our kids’ school was an absolutely great guy, I planned on killing off his fictional counterpart in the first chapter. I’d never written an adult novel; never written a mystery; never even read mysteries. (I now do and I just finished Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Detectives’ Union which is amazing – funny and utterly original.)
I stopped working as a fulltime editor at Penguin; took Wednesdays and Thursdays (non-weekend and consecutive) as my days home for writing; took three writing classes over the next two years; and then was part of a writers’ group with three women novelists – Nina Solomon (Single Wife is her first novel and wonderful) and Pamela Jackson (Becoming the Butlers, very funny but hard to find now) and Yona Zeldis McDonough (her last novel was In Dahlia’s Wake).
It took me more than three years to finish Dangerous Admissions. It was hardest, most frustrating, but ultimately most satisfying piece of writing I’ve ever done. The stories for my children’s books often come to me in a flash – that’s how it is with the Fancy Nancy books. But I had to push the plot of the mystery every step of the way. I kind of hate authors who say that they just sit at the computers and let their characters speak to them. I anguish over every sentence…I think that’s one of the drawbacks of being an editor; I edit and re-edit the same paragraph until I become snow-blind and can’t tell whether my last version is better, worse or basically the same as the first.
I am blessed – or cursed – with a bulldog nature. When I decide to do something, I sink my teeth in and don’t let go. So I eventually did finish the book and I’m still startled to see that it is a physical object sitting in bookstores. And if you are wondering whether it’s easier writing the follow-up, the answer is yes but really only infinitesimally so.
4. Rannie and her A-list of supporting characters in this book (Nate, Olivia, Tim, Elliot, The Lilies, David, Daisy, Mary, Peter, Grant, etc.) seem prime for another book--do you see this book as part of a series? If yes, what can we expect for the next book? If not, will it be hard for you to "let these characters go?" I ask, because of course, as with any attached reader, well, I am having a hard time letting go!
I’m already slaving away on the second with Rannie et al. She’s copyediting the latest tell-all by a reclusive writer of snarky, trash-and-burn celebrity bios…when Rannie comes to pick up the ms, however, she finds the writer (I’m still fiddling with her name) tied to her bed and strangled – with an Hermes scarf. A lot of the book involves a famous art collection and I am getting to do a lot of interesting research. (In my next life, I am going to be an art historian, concentrating on Flemish 15th century stuff.
5. Lastly (because I ask all my visiting authors), if you could have any super power, what would it be? For example, this week for me, it would be an extra hand/arm (or two). Seriously. With a new baby in tow, an extra hand would give me the extra reach to fix dinner for the family while holding the baby. How about you-- super power of your dreams and why?
Okay, a little preface is required: What I’d like most is to be able to spend time (say, an hour or so) with each of my boys at different stages of their babyhood and childhood – to be able to hold them again and smell that delicious baby smell, to hear what they sounded like at 3 or 7, to be walking down the street and have a small hand in mine. I think we forget so quickly what a child was really, really like so my superpower would be to teleport in time but only over the past 28 years. I don’t have to go back to Elizabethan England or meet Cleopatra. The superpower would be strictly for a mother thing.
Thanks Jane! Lovely adult novel debut! You have me hooked. Can't wait to read more of your work. Just make sure bring back the down to earth quirky characters. Please.
And did you not just love her? I mean, did you READ that super power wish? Because right now, it is making me (double) cherish the little every day things with my son and daughter (the little hand in mine thing killed me. Utterly).
Jane, if I had a way to bottle up that baby smell and send it to you--you'd have it over-nighted pronto! I have a 5-week-old full of smell for the taking.
Anyway, please take some time and visit Jane online (see below) and go buy the book. It is was fun and absolutely great for this time of year!
Buy it on Amazon here Visit Jane O'Connor's web site Or better yet, take a little sneak peak inside DANGEROUS ADMISSIONS
