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Anyone who reads amateur detective novels has a heightened suspension of disbelief. Pure and simple, very few people come across dead bodies in their lifetimes. it's something that I, among others, began calling "Jessica Fletcher syndrome" several years ago.Ý In Chandler's Daughter, Truly Donovan has written such a convincing amateur sleuth that it really made me sit up. Certain amateur detectives are believable because they work in professions that ask questions - reporters like Irene Kelly in Jan Burke's work or like Aileen Schumacher's consulting engineer whose job is often to discover what went wrong when a building collapses.Ý But I could see myself in Donovan's character. I could get it. What Lexy does is investigate in a way that you or I could do without special training or education, and we could help solve a mystery. This isn't necessary in reading mysteries of course, but in this case, it really added to my enjoyment. Lexy Connor is an older, heavy woman who lives on her own, and on her own terms outside of Boulder, Colorado. She is a software consultant with a taste for good food, good clothes and a love of her West Highland White Terrier - a Westie named Molly. The daughter of a long-time friend has asked for her help. Tally Richard was adopted by Lexy's friends Susan and Peter, both of whom died in a car accident five years before. Suddenly, Tally has received a note that seems to connect to her birth mother warning her of danger. Lexy travels back east to suburban New York and Northern California to help track down the puzzle. She has truly winning ways and she is smart and tough without being annoying or rude about it. Lexy is a mystery reader who knows just how impossible it is for any amateur to solve mysteries; she doesn't have a cop contact, she doesn't have access to private records. But she has a brain, and a creative intelligence so that tracing someone's past can involve using telephone directories and high school yearbooks, which Lexy can do. Along the way, she encounters a charming gentleman in New York; I wondered a bit how this romance would work, because of the distances involved in the lives of the two players, but I didn't really care. What I liked was that Donovan wrote a romance for a fat older woman. Lexy is not model-gorgeous, not the hottest thing around, but she is attractive. She is smart and caring and attentive and I was pleased that the author recognized that for may people these are qualities that are attractive. She's smart enough not to take too many risks (something lots of amateur sleuths do, which always amazes me) and in asking lots of questions, she solves an old mystery - or rather an old crime that had been written off.Ý I'm not big on animals in mysteries, and from time to time I found Donovan's focus on Molly to be a bit much, but it sure would not stop me from reading about Lexy Connor again. She's practical, smart, interesting, and caring. A good friend. -- http://www.drizzle.com/~roscoe/tshirts.html - Sherloc kian, Wodehousian & more
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, May 2000
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