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Dark Lady
Dark Lady
Jun 1, 2025 11:17 AM

Author:Richard North Patterson

Dark Lady

The setting is Steelton, a struggling Midwestern town trying to save its decaying inner city by building a major league baseball stadium. Dark Lady introduces Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz, who has escaped her alcoholic father and working class background to become head of the Prosecutor's homicide unit. Her ambition is to become County Prosecutor. But this ambition, indeed her very survival, is threatened when her ex-lover Jack Kovak, a drug lawyer, is murdered, and Stella leads the investigation. There are more deaths and revelations about Jack Kovak's dealings with the city's crime lord, and a trail of wrong-doing, that implicates officers in law enforcement, possibly within her own office. As her inquiry draws her into a re-examination of her own complex past, her certainty that she is being watched and followed, leads her to fear for her own future.

Reviews

The Jane Austen of our time

—— Harpers and Queen

Amis can out-sentence practically anyone. The firecracker returns of phrase are not just audacious, they're also accurate... Like Nabokov, Amis makes writing seem fun, serious fun

—— Geoff Dyer , Guardian

Amis is as talented a journalist as he is a novelist, but these essays all manifest an unusual extra quality, one that is not unlike friendship. He makes an effort; he makes readers feel that they are the only person there

—— Rachel Cusk , The Times

A superb journalist... It is Amis's jaunty, appalled and always avid watchfulness that makes in this collection true and truly enjoayable... Visiting Mrs Nabokov is a suitcase full of treats

—— John Banville , Irish Times

Sabbath explodes some mad genie out of his bottle... Sabbath's Theater has more firestorming prose than any other novel I have read this year

—— Observer

A work of near-heroic vitality and cunning

—— Sunday Telegraph

Absolutely filthy book with one of the most unpleasantly priapic and desperate anti-heroes in modern literature. A delight

—— Nigel Lindsay , Daily Express

This is the first of Roth’s late masterworks, and the most powerful

—— Orlando Figes , The Week

[American Pastoral] is gorgeously written with passages of breathtaking beauty filled with wisdom and pathos

—— Sarfraz Manzoor , Week

A simple beautiful ending to a deeply sombre book

—— Scotland on Sunday

There is enough plot for several novels here (enough sex for dozens), all vividly conveyed in the author's excitable style... Her many fans will not be disappointed

—— Literary Review

Harris does it again with this brilliantly told tale.

—— THE SUN

Voluptuous helpings of magic, mystery, love and, of course, mouthwatering discriptions of her favourite chocolates, combine to make a rich, satisfying story that should keep you riveted to your sun lounger page after page

—— SHE magazine

The Lollipop Shoes is a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair.

—— DAILY TELEGRAPH

...the magic still enchants

—— MAIL ON SUNDAY

...a sumptuous treat.

—— HEAT Magazine, May 2007

...a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair. Harris is a delicious treat.

—— DAILY TELEGRAPH

This novel has the richness of the best quality dark chocolate.

—— INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Sparkling black comedy

—— Play

Pearson is a hilarious author who captures the guilt and the exhaustion of the working mother's life perfectly

—— Dublin Daily

It's the incisive details and Pearson's vivid writing that propel the story

—— New York Times Books

Smart book...great fun

—— New York Times

Pearson is insightful, witty and full of fun

—— Daily Telegraph

Wonderfully warm, witty and intelligent

—— Sunday independent

A Bible for the working woman

—— Oprah Winfrey

Her social observation is unerringly accurate...so beautifully written that it brought tears to my eyes, as well as a wry smile

—— Daily Telegraph

Pearson...to write a novel...that has already sold a gazillion copies and is going to become a film. Hats off to you, madam!

—— Ok Magazine

She will...make you laugh

—— Culture, Sunday Times

Pearson...has made it all fresh again

—— Time

Entertaining, compulsively readable, and brilliantly written

—— Daily Candy

Hilarious and...poignant

—— Publisher's Weekly

This terrific novel is alternately hilarious and sad

—— Upfront

It may change your life

—— The Observer

Pearson is a very witty and moving writer. Her prose is spare and skilful...waspish truisms and spot-on social observations

—— Daily Express

Intelligent, witty and of-the-moment, it mixes sassy, brittle perceptions with barefaced sentimentality

—— The Herald, Glasgow

Brilliantly captures and defines the mood of the moment...sparkling wit and razor sharp insights

—— XW Magazine

Sharply observed and frequently funny

—— Evening Standard
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