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Merchant of Venus, by Ellen Hart
PDF Download Merchant of Venus, by Ellen Hart
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Jane Lawless is a woman at a crossroads - her lover has left, she has finally recovered from a vicious attack sustained last year, and the holidays are closing in. With no one to help her ring in the new year, Jane reluctantly agrees to accompany her good friend Cordelia Thorn on a peculiar holiday trip: Cordelia's estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn, has asked them to attend her wedding.
Octavia getting married is no surprise - she's done it three times before - but her candidate for hubby #4 certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive eighty-three-year-old retired Hollywood director, a relic from the golden age of Tinseltown with a controversial past. No one can understand how the two met, much less fell in love. When the bodies start to drop, Jane realizes it might not be love at all that brought the young diva and the aged director together, but something much deeper, and perhaps more sinister.
Delving deep into film history, Jane finds unsettling connections between Roland and a murder that was never solved. Finding out what happened 40 years ago could be the key to unlock the mystery of Octavia's curious marriage, but laying bare such long-buried secrets also promises grave consequences for everyone involved.
- Sales Rank: #2355634 in Books
- Published on: 2001-02-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.58" h x 1.31" w x 6.24" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
Amazon.com Review
Jane Lawless has just broken up with her lover and is barely recovered from injuries suffered in her last adventure (Hunting the Witch), but that doesn't stop her from accompanying her pal Cordelia to the rundown but still magnificent Connecticut estate known as Innishannon. It is there that Cordelia's estranged sister, actress Octavia Thorne, is about to marry the reclusive but legendary movie director Roland Lester. Cordelia may be her best friend, but Lawless, the Minneapolis restaurateur-sleuth who's starred in several Ellen Hart cozies, has no idea why the Thorne sisters have been strangers to each other since their mother's death eight years before. And Cordelia herself is just as baffled by Octavia's reasons for marrying the 80- year-old Lester.
A mansion full of picaresque characters keeps the reader guessing after first Lester and then the young documentary producer who's on hand to chronicle the wedding (and, incidentally, to solve the mystery of her own grandfather's murder in the long-ago Hollywood days when he and Lester knew each other) are murdered. Most of the guests had a motive: Gracie, the young Internet entrepreneur whose plans to turn Innishannon into a huge theme park--Gracieland--will be drastically reduced if Olivia inherits after she marries Lester; Verna Lange, the faded but still glamorous actress who costarred with Lew Wallace in Roland Lester's greatest hits back in the '50s; Christian Wallace, Lew's son and Gracie's lover; and Hiram Thorne, Octavia and Cordelia's father, who knows a secret about his daughter's fiancé that may derail the couple's plans.
This deft, well-written mystery is light on blood and gore but heavy on Hollywood history and gossip. Did you know that Clark Gable's leading ladies hated to kiss him because of his denture breath? Hart has done her homework and turned in another smart, lively page-turner that will delight her many fans and probably win her some new ones, especially those who enjoy tales of Tinseltown in its heyday. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Minneapolis-based restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless is out of her element in this so-so mystery, the 10th in the series (after 1999's Hunting the Witch). Jane accompanies her best friend, Cordelia Thorn, to an isolated mansion on the Connecticut coast to attend the hastily arranged marriage of Cordelia's younger sister, Octavia, a Broadway actress, to 83-year-old Roland Lester, a reclusive millionaire movie director. Among the handful of friends and relatives in attendance is documentary filmmaker Ellie Saks, who is at work on a profile of the great director himself--one that threatens to reveal Hollywood secrets of yesteryear. When Roland collapses during the ceremony and dies shortly after of poisoning, suspicion falls on a number of the guests--not least Octavia. Jane's sympathetic nature invites the confidences of others, and her understanding of human nature makes her good at putting the pieces of a mystery together. But the book suffers from a lack of a clear narrative focus, and the characters are clich‚d--none, except for the flamboyant Cordelia, quite comes alive. Uninterrupted stretches of dialogue and online research substitute for character development and investigation. What sets this book apart is the candor with which key characters deal with homosexuality and face the ugly ways they've behaved under the pressure of McCarthyism and the strict moral codes of the past.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Minneapolis restauranteur Jane Lawless (Hunting the Witch), best friend Cordelia, and Cordelia's sister Octavia visit NewYork City, where Octavia intends to marry an 80-year old, extremely rich film director. When they arrive, however, the director is missing, and Octavia becomes suspect number one. Another fascinating case for Lawless.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A Wonderful and Intricately Plotted Mystery
By Lori L. Lake
This is Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless's tenth mystery outing, and the novels keep getting increasingly complex, not to mention more intricately plotted. Jane is still recovering from injuries suffered the previous fall when she was nearly killed, and in this book, she is more vulnerable than she has ever been in any of the previous books. She and her best buddy, Cordelia, travel to upstate Connecticut to an old mansion, Innishannon, to attend the wedding of Cordelia's estranged sister, Octavia, a stage actress who caught the attention of the living legend, Roland Lester. He's an 82-year-old movie director, a millionaire, and a man with multiple secrets including one that goes all the way back to 1957 when his best friend and purported lover, Lew Wallace, was shot in a murder that was never solved. Is this the kind of man Octavia should be marrying? Can Cordelia and Octavia put aside eight years worth of differences and reconcile? And what about the zany cast of characters rattling around at Innishannon? Roland's brother, a grand-niece, Lew Wallace's son, the housekeeper, and a documentary filmmaker on site all have their own secrets to hide, too. Soon enough, there are more killings, and it is unclear whether they are connected to the past murders or not.
I loved the references to the movies. Hart has taken the time to flesh out a mix of made up characters with the real-life stories about Hollywood legends such as Loretta Young, John Wayne, Clark Gable, George Cukor, and many more. Along with that, Cordelia's humor-and even Jane's occasional wry sense of humor-was entertaining. It didn't make for laugh-out-loud yucks, but Cordelia's exaggeration and her sparring with her sister had this reviewer grinning fairly regularly.
For readers who have followed the Lawless mysteries since their 1989 inception, Hart continues to build upon the relationships and storylines from the previous nine books, but anyone could pick this novel up, read it out of order, and still be perfectly at home in the world that Hart creates. Highly recommended for all lovers of mystery, and especially for those who enjoy sub-plots of growth and change for the main character along the lines of fiction by Nevada Barr, Carolyn Wheat, Sue Grafton, and Marcia Muller. ~Lori L. Lake, reviewer for Midwest Book Review and author of Gun Shy, Under The Gun, Different Dress, Ricochet In Time, and Stepping Out: Short Stories.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Jane Lawlessis back for another great who-done-it
By A Customer
Sisters Octavia and Cornelia Thom have not spoken to each other in eight years ever since their mother died in a car accident when the former drove drunk. Out of the blue Octavia calls Cornelia asking her to be a witness at her wedding to Roland Lester, a former Hollywood movie star. Unable to resist her sibling's pleadings, Cornelia agrees and drags her best friend, Jane Lawless, chef extraodinaire along to keep her company. Jane feels leaving Minnesota for Connecticut will do her some good since she still suffers from post trauma syndrome, the aftermath of being attacked in her own home.
When Jane and Cornelia arrive at the Connecticut mansion, they immediately sense a lot of undercurrents and tension coming from all directions, but nowhere one can pinpoint. On the day of the wedding, the groom collapses at the altar. Later the doctor pronounces Roland dead, a victim of poisoning. Someone inside his home killed the victim and Jane will not easily rest until she uncovers the identity of the culprit.
Ellen Hart is a genius when it comes to plotting a complex multi-layered story line in which each of the many subplots effortlessly tie back to the main theme. This leads to numerous suspects with clear motives for wanting Roland dead and allows the author to feed her audience a steady diet of misdirection. THE MERCHANT OF VENUS is a great mystery that rereading this and the other tales in this fabulous amateur sleuth series will ease the wait for the next book in this series.
Harriet Klausner
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Hart's newest is a masterpiece
By Constance Berlin
When I walked into my local bookstore the other night, I found Merchant of Venus on the front table. I couldn't resist. Hart is a writer I always enjoy, but this book far exceeded my expectations. The old Hollywood setting was suberbly drawn. I devoured the book whole, relishing every gossipy detail. The business about Gone With the Wind was fascinating, and so was the sexual politics -- gay Hollywood, the Hollywood nobody ever talks about. Jane has become more real to me with each book, and Cordelia is, as always, priceless, especially when in the same room with her theatrical sister, Octavia. Innishannon, the huge old mansion in Connecticut where Jane and Cordelia spend Christmas, was as atmospheric to me as Manderlay. Simply put, this book was marvelous (unlike Hunting the Witch, which I thought was okay, but not up to Hart's usual standards.) I couldn't recommend The Merhcant of Venus more highly.
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