Bored with life in Toronto, attractive young Priscilla Tempest left Canada for London, where she\u2019s serving as press officer at the famed Savoy Hotel. Her title might as well be Miss Fix-it, since she\u2019s the one who\u2019s called to deal with all sorts of problems, from hungover guests to temperamental actors who refuse to rehearse. Her current emergency, however, literally has her name on it, since a dead man has been found in a car in front of the hotel clutching a note to \u201cmy darling Priscilla.\u201d Author Base treats Priscilla like Agatha Christie\u2019s indispensable Lucy Eyelesbarrow in 4:50 From Paddington, a comparison encouraged by the key supporting role Dame Agatha plays in the press officer\u2019s adventure. Priscilla deals competently with random inquiries from members of the public and props up the fragile egos of stars like Rex Harrison and Marlene Dietrich, who are currently squabbling their way through the Savoy Theatre\u2019s production of Witness for the Prosecution. But despite Base\u2019s frequent reminders of Priscilla\u2019s comeliness, his protagonist is not especially appealing. Her attitude toward the wives of the many men she beds is dismissive. She\u2019s contemptuous of Phoebe, her plain-Jane sister, whose sole sexual conquest is a lowly car salesman and Priscilla\u2019s ex-fianc\u00e9 to boot. She isn\u2019t particularly effective as a press officer, since she\u2019s ignorant of basic journalistic customs, like the need to fact-check information before publishing it. And as a sleuth, she\u2019s extremely gullible, accepting suspects\u2019 stories at face value. She does manage to solve the case, although most readers won\u2019t be able to, since the solution to the mystery is in The Red Umbrella, a book that doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bored with life in Toronto, attractive young Priscilla Tempest left Canada for London, where she\u2019s serving as press officer at the famed Savoy Hotel. Her title might as well be Miss Fix-it, since she\u2019s the one who\u2019s called to deal with all sorts of problems, from hungover guests to temperamental actors who refuse to rehearse. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}