Something for the Weekend Book

Already celebrated as one of the finest comic actresses of her generation, Pauline McLynn bids, with her gently witty first novel Something for the Weekend, to be praised as a writer as well. Leonora "Leo" Street is a Dublin private eye, but not the sort of private eye to whom huge adventures happen; she investigates small infidelities and frauds as a commercial business and is quite content with a quiet life."Most of my work is mundane--insurance claims, infidelities, fraud and sometimes a missing person. Jealousy, spite, greed and despair, that's my currency, so I don't usually meet people at their best, even if they have one. The cops deal with the glamorous side--murder, drug-dealing, terrorism and sometimes they wear a uniform. I take up whatever they don't, won't or can't do..."For her, the great attraction is the chance to lead more lives than one--a weekend at a smart residential cookery course, followed by a society ball, is fun in itself, as well as a chance to find out whether a horrid tycoon's sweet wife is cheating on him. Leo is keen to have fun, and also keen to do the right thing; the only suspense in the book is how much fun she will have and what the right thing will turn out to be. The charm, always present, but never laid on thick, makes this quite enough to be going on with; and in the process, we learn as much about the pursuit of investigations as we would have done if people had kept coming through the door with guns. --Roz KaveneyRead More