This Dame for Hire

by Sandra Scoppettone

Book Overview

"I didn't start out to be a private eye. I thought I was gonna be a secretary-get my boss his java in the morning, take letters, and so on. Hell, I didn't get my degree in steno to put my life on the line. It was true I wanted an interesting job, but that I'd end up a PI myself . . . it never entered my mind."

New York, 1943. Almost anything in pants has gone to serve Uncle Sam in the war-including Woody Mason, the head of a detective agency...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345478118
• ISBN13: 9780345478115
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.3" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Scoppettone's best yet

With this book Scoppettone becomes to vintage New York crime writing what Chandler is to Los Angeles. The hard biting one liners begin on page one and don't rest until the last sentence of the last page. To those armchair critics who have taken exception to the author's use of period language, I suggest you may have missed the subtleness of her wit. Faye Quick may say "ya know" alot, but she also tells the reader she knows the defination of alliteration. This dame has a method to her madness. Anyway, I love this book; in-between the first page and the last, there is plently of action, plot, and menacing murder suspects to keep the persistently professional yet charming PI protagonist up to her headlights in mystery. Whodunit? I ain't tell'n ya. Ankle on down to your local book store ASAP. This is an instant classic!

Recall Bogart and Bacall?

What a great read! Reminds me of the Janet Evanovich series ("One for the Money" etc.) starring another gutsy skirt (= broad), Stephanie Plum, but with an added historical dimension, a "film noir" quality, and 1940's sensibility (not even "R" rated). Loved the details on everyday life during WWII and the engaging use of the NY dialect to add a sense of grittiness and reality to the dialog. Hope this is just the first of many Faye Quick novels we have to look forward to!

Great book noir

I haven't even finished this book, but am writing this review. If you love l940's movies as I do, you will love this book. Especially like the movie star names of the characters.

1940s lingo PI tale

Rebeccasreads highly recommends THIS DAME FOR HIRE as a lovely evening's read, atmospheric, amusing with just enough twists to keep you guessing. Sandra Scoppettone has breathed life into an historic New York era when good women didn't smoke on the streets, food was bought with ration books, girls danced with GIs at the USOs, people listened to the world on their radios, male chauvinism was alive & rampant, & certain skirts gave as good as they got! Faye Quick didn't start out a private dick, she was hired by Woody Mason to be his secretary until, a couple of years later, he signed up for the duration & insisted she keep his home fire burning. So now she's doing her bit for the war effort, carrying a gat which Woody insisted she learn how to shoot. She's hired by a high-class husband & wife to find out why their daughter got herself killed. & what her parents haven't told Faye sets her after a philandering NYU professor & a shady character with a horrible side business. Except there's someone out there who's going to stop this uppity PI. I look forward to Faye Quick's next case & another dip into New York's past, & the half-remembered lingo of the time.

excellent historical mystery

She started out working as a secretary for Woody Mason of A Detective Agency in 1940 but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he enlisted. Wanting to have the business when he came home, he made his secretary Faye Quick a private detective and she is now working her own cases with her own secretary to do the clerical work. Since January of 1942 she has been doing well for herself and not even tripping over the murdered body of a woman in the snow dousing her enthusiasm for life. A few months after finding Claudette West, her parents arrive in her office wanting to hire Faye to find their daughter's killer because they believe the police aren't giving the case enough attention. Feeling an obligation to the woman, she accepts the case and quickly learns that Claudette had a lot of men interested in her and was pregnant. Faye pounds the pavement asking anyone who was close to Claudette what they knew of the men (most of them suspects) and the pregnancy. She thinks that there is a link between her lover and her murder. Applying solid investigative methods she is bound to find out who the killer is. New York City in 1943 is dark & gritty just like the case the protagonist is working on is. Sandra Scoppettone captures the ambience of the era through the use of historical facts and the era's vernacular. Renowned for her grand-breaking Lauren Laurano Novels, Ms. Scoppettone has created another fabulous series that is sure to win her an award nomination for its originality and brilliant characterizations. Harriet Klausner