Tender Death

Rating:
Summary: Headhunting in New York
Review: TENDER DEATH is the second book in the Smith and Wetzon series. Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon are partners in a Wall Street headhunting firm. Wetzon, an ex-Broadway dancer, has befriended an elderly woman, who asks her to visit an old school chum. They do, and shortly thereafter, the chum apparently leaps out of her posh apartment in New York. Wetzon does not accept the police's finding of suicide, and tries to investigate on her own.

There are many twists and turns before the denouement, including a wonderful trip to a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn, complete with its own cast of characters, a party at Smith's condo, and stops at a few restaurants along the way. The dream sequences are a bit offputting though, and slow the action considerably.

Annette Meyers was a Wall Street headhunter and an assistant to a producer of Broadway musicals, so she really knows a part of New York that very few of us ever get to see. Her descriptions of New York are wonderful. You know exactly where you are at all times, and when Wetzon visits friends or goes to a restaurant, one can picture the neighborhood precisely.

Wetzon's partner, Smith, is a very abrasive person. In the first book in the series, THE BIG KILLING, I thought she was a bit annoying, perhaps a caricature of what the midwesterners think of a New Yorker, but in TENDER DEATH, she is really, truly, big time self-centered, nasty annoying. I wonder why Wetzon puts up with this, so-called friend.

Rating:
Summary: Headhunting in New York
Review: TENDER DEATH is the second book in the Smith and Wetzon series. Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon are partners in a Wall Street headhunting firm. Wetzon, an ex-Broadway dancer, has befriended an elderly woman, who asks her to visit an old school chum. They do, and shortly thereafter, the chum apparently leaps out of her posh apartment in New York. Wetzon does not accept the police's finding of suicide, and tries to investigate on her own.

There are many twists and turns before the denouement, including a wonderful trip to a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn, complete with its own cast of characters, a party at Smith's condo, and stops at a few restaurants along the way. The dream sequences are a bit offputting though, and slow the action considerably.

Annette Meyers was a Wall Street headhunter and an assistant to a producer of Broadway musicals, so she really knows a part of New York that very few of us ever get to see. Her descriptions of New York are wonderful. You know exactly where you are at all times, and when Wetzon visits friends or goes to a restaurant, one can picture the neighborhood precisely.

Wetzon's partner, Smith, is a very abrasive person. In the first book in the series, THE BIG KILLING, I thought she was a bit annoying, perhaps a caricature of what the midwesterners think of a New Yorker, but in TENDER DEATH, she is really, truly, big time self-centered, nasty annoying. I wonder why Wetzon puts up with this, so-called friend.