Title: A Girl Called Love (originally called The Last Honeytrap)
Author: Louise Lee
Publisher: Headline
Publication Date: 28 July 2016
Twitter: @louise_lee1
Blurb
Scott ‘Scat’ Delaney is a world famous jazz singer. He has ample opportunity to stray and his girlfriend, Alice, needs to know she can trust him.
Step up Florence Love, Private Investigator.
Florence has just ten days to entrap an A-Lister. Whilst sticking to her cardinal rule: One kiss, with tongues, five seconds – case closed.
A master of body language, evolutionary science and nifty disguises, her approach is unconventional, her success rate excellent. But targets are rarely as beautiful as Scat. Never fall for the target.
That is very bad form indeed.
A Girl Called Love marks the energetic launch of a brilliant new series. Once you’ve met Florence Love, you’ll see the world in glorious technicolour at last.
Review
A Girl Called Love is not the funny chick lit mystery that I thought it would be. It is a whole lot more than that.
Florence Love is a private investigator specialising in entrapment. She is paid by suspicious spouses to find proof (or not) of their partner’s unfaithfulness.
Florence is an interesting protagonist. She is smart, attractive, and devious. I didn’t initially warm to Florence, however she slowly got under my skin and by the half way point I found that I actually rather liked her as a character. I was particularly intrigued about her level of self-awareness regarding her own strengths and weaknesses. As a protagonist, she’s certainly unique!
Florence’s colleague is her younger brother Michael. The dynamic between Florence and Michael is interesting. She helped to raise him after their mother Bambi left when they were young. He is somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Florence spends a lot of time looking after Michael, yet she needs him just as much as he needs her. The book is almost as much about the characters as it is about the story and, as a reader, you get a vivid sense of who they are.
When it comes to the plot, there are twists and turns galore. Lee certainly has a creative brain! Why did their mother go missing? Is she still alive? Who was the mystery man in the car? Is Scott ‘Scat’ Delaney being unfaithful to his fiancée? Will he fall in love with Florence? Will she fall for him? There are just so many questions to be answered as the tale progresses. I would love to say that I guessed how things would turn out, but I really didn’t. I do love a story where the ending isn’t totally obvious!
Lee has a unique style of writing. I love her use of vocabulary and I enjoyed her irreverent sense of humour. Whilst I must admit that I wasn’t quite sure about the book initially, a couple of chapters in and it quickly becomes a page-turner. A Girl Called Love is funny, feisty and, above all, it’s great fun!
About the Author
Louise Lee was once a Geography teacher. When oxbow lakes no longer floated her boat, she took the next, natural step in her career progression and became a Private Investigator. Memorable cases include a high-functioning bigamist with three wives and six children, who was set to marry a fourth; and losing a target because George Clooney started chatting her up in a bar. Though she still does some sleuth work, she’s buggered what with her photo being so prominently on show to the left. A good job therefore she has taken the next, natural step in her career progression and become an author…
Louise is mother to one small girl-baby and one large boy-man. She undertook a MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, and has had work commissioned by and broadcast on BBC Radio Four.
Her novel, The Last Honeytrap, is the first in a series – The Last Bigamist and The Last Serial Killer come next. The books follow the cases of Florence Love, a PI who specialises in entrapment. If Louise’s mum is reading this, the books are in no way based on her true experiences. Honest.
Buy Links
The Curious Ginger Cat 