Review by Booklist Review
Nic and Nigel Martini can't take their bull mastiff, Skippy, into the auditorium where the Oscars are being presented, so they send him home with a sitter after the red carpet. When they get home following the after-party, they find their front door open, the house ransacked, Skippy not in sight, and his sitter beaten unconscious. Missing from the house are home movies shot during the production of a notorious film made 20 years earlier; during the filming, the lead actress died mysteriously. Nigel, whose company restores vintage films, was planning to reconstruct and edit the footage to see if there were any clues about the actress' death. Nic, formerly a New York City homicide detective, alienates the local cops but pursues her own hunches by doing the social rounds with Hollywood A-listers, many of whom have connections to the long-ago scandal. It's a gossip columnist's delight! Second in the series featuring Nic and Nigel, this homage to Dashiell Hammett's Thin Man series is a lively romp, with snappy dialogue, likable leads, and a goofball dog.--Muller, Karen Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A glamorous night at the Academy Awards ends in tragedy. Nicole and Nigel Martini created a sensation when they discovered a treasure trove of home movies taken during the filming of the 20-year-old cult classic A Winter's Night. So when they arrive on the red carpet with their bow-tied dog, Skippy, they're naturally interviewed by a reporter for HNS! Television. Nigel's company finds and restores films thought to be lost, and the extensive footage shot by the producer's teenage daughter is a real coup. Sending Skippy home with DeDee Evans, a recent hire who'll babysit him, Nic and Nigel get ready to enjoy the show and the star-studded party that follows when they're approached by a man who claims to represent someone wanting to buy the tapes. After they refuse and move on to the surreal world of the Hollywood elite, both are struck by the uneasy relations among several of the actors who appeared in A Winter's Night, whose young star, Melanie Summers, was found tragically deadsome say murderedon the set. Oscar-winning Christina Franklin's long-running romance with co-star John Cummings has come to a bitter end, and now he's dating a none-too-bright ingnue. The sniping of these three, along with the director, producer, and family members, is only a prelude to the real trouble heralded by an inaudible call from DeDee, whom, when Nic and Nigel arrive home, they find badly beaten by whomever stole some of the films from their home. When the detective assigned to the case writes it off as burglary by a bunch of kids, Nic, a former New York City homicide detective (Murder with a Twist, 2015, etc.), prepares to investigate herself. Since the reason for the current crime lies in what happened two decades ago on the set of A Winter's Night, Nic and Nigel have an even better reason to search the remaining footage for clues. Kiely's modern-day Nick and Nora Charles provide plenty of clever repartee as they delve into a mystery full of Hollywood heavyweights with motives for murder. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
