Death Brims Over

by Barbara Jaye Wilson

Meet Brenda MidnightShe's a savvy young designer with her own hat shop, who has never even thought of chasing crooks. But when crime invades her cobblestone Greenwich Village neighborhood and the cops... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380788209
• ISBN13: 9780380788200
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Funny female amateur sleuth

Brenda Midnight is a Greenwich Village hatmaker who gets robbed of a piece of beaded lace and then finds her best friend, who gave her the lace to work on, killed. From there on it's a comic mystery. The information about the Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Village fashion scene was interesting. There's a wonderful snooty law firm that presents a facade of upmarket efficiency but where nobody really knows what they're doing. (She fakes her way into a job there and pretends to be operating a computer). I was reminded of Sparkle Hayter by the downtown Manhatten milieu, and, to be honest, by the tendency to substitute eccentricity for characterization. ("Slaves of New York" had another Greenwich Village hatmaker). The plot is fantastic but tight and logically coherent.I enjoyed this and will be looking for more. The missing star is only because Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton write within this same category and something has to be reserved for them.

Serious crime, comical story

Brenda Midnight is proof that while one can mourn the loss of a friend, life does go on, and even in mourning, there's humor left to life. As Brenda solves her friend's murder, she teams up with quirky allies and bad guys and absurd plot twists.It's all in good fun.

Thoroughly enjoyable cozy read!

I bought this book on a whim, thinking that the plot synopsis sounded interesting enough to give it a try. I wasn't particularly expecting anything great, but was very pleasantly surprised by the story. It grabbed my interest right from the first page, and drew me in. The Brenda Midnight character came across as someone who was willing to go out and be herself, but was also not a character so gung-ho about doing everything that she would grate on my nerves. Just enough of both spunk and a certain amount of worry to seem very real. And I liked the fact that some of what happened to her - and what caused her to be heralded as a heroine - just fell into her lap by accident. She didn't solve everything by brilliant deduction.

A very pleasant surprise

I admit it - after reading the back cover, I was expecting this to be just another forgettable, gimmicky, amateurish foray into mystery fiction. I was very pleasantly surprised. Wilson's distinct style comes through right away, and she gives milliner Brenda Midnight an excellent voice that makes her fun to get to know as she discovers strengths she never knew she possessed. Brenda Midnight owns Midnight Millinery - the Greenwich Village hat shop from which she took her name - and the book opens with Brenda working diligently on the bridal veil for the high-profile, high-profit wedding her dress designer friend Carla won the contract on. This brief intro takes us right into the mystery action as a woman dressed from head to toe in hot pink bursts into the shop, pulls a gun on Brenda, and demands all of the hats for the wedding party. Once Brenda gets over the initial shock of being robbed, she tries to consult Carla on a plan of action for salvaging the wedding, which is just a few days away, only to discover that Carla has been freshly murdered.To make matters worse, if you can imagine that, Carla bled all over the bridal gown, and the police eschew Brenda's Lady in Pink connection to follow up on bogus accusations that Carla was a prostitute with drug connections. Brenda must now deal with an irate bride and her mother, the ruin of her reputation in the fashion industry, and the loss of her close friend whose name is being dragged through very muddy headlines. Unable to concentrate on her fall line of hats, Brenda turns to her ex-boyfriend Johnny, who isn't a detective but played one on TV once, for help finding the Lady in Pink and restoring Carla's reputation.What ensues is madness. Brenda impersonates a legal temp in search of a connection between the bride and the Lady in Pink and falls for the law firm's computer consultant, who may or may not be involved in Carla's murder. Brenda's computer nerd friend hacks into the law firm's personnel files, teams up with Carla's artist neighbor to turn Brenda's shop into a desktop publishing studio, and tries to get Brenda and Johnny back together. Johnny, researching his next cop role, buddies up with the investigating officers and, with his agent's help, gets them back on track and locates a connection to an infamous hit man named Snake. (I don't want to spoil it for you by revealing any details, but Snake's non-hostage scene had me laughing out loud.) Also in the mix are an obnoxious yuppie intent on procuring Carla's condo, a secretary intent on blackmailing her boss for a trip to Europe, a philandering art gallery owner, a tiny canine bundle of energy named Jackhammer, a box of hand-sewn silk ties, an estate collection of medieval textiles, an Internet romance, and a dispute over an ugly shag rug.Wilson deftly combines serious reflection on death and crime with fun potshots at the conventions of the modern mystery novel. The characters are quirky

Brenda Midnight- not your average New Yorker

The first of four delightful Brenda Midnight mysteries, "Death Brims Over" starts out full-swing in Greenwich Village, where Brenda Midnight, milliner extrodanaire, has her own hat shop, and is just your average hatress. Except things have changed. Brenda is offered a deal by her dress-designer friend Carla; to create the high-society wedding of the year. There's a pile of money with Brenda's name on it, as long as she finishes all the hats in time for the wedding. Just as everything looks perfect and Brenda's about to wrap it up, in comes a lady in hot-hot pink with a gun, who is mysteriously not after her cash-register, but makes off with every single hat in the collection! Distrought, Brenda runs over to Carla to find her-dead? Brenda's sure it's the Lady in Pink, but can she convince the police and nab the crook? Thus begins the fast-paced novel, a supurb combination of wit, fashion, murder, and a little NYC too. Brenda Midnight's tale takes us all over the Village, snooping in law firms, and straight into hot water. We meet Johnny Verlane, savy actor, Lemmy Crenshaw, a money and woman obsessed agent, Chuck, a computer genius with frizzled red hair, and many more. Is it too much to handle? Not with Brenda Midnight on the case!