The novel begins at the end of summer, 1947, in New England, and we first meet two young women, Betty Moran and Willie Tigue, whose attitude and voices reminded me of millennial hip fiction. These two switch identities so that one can go to grad school, and the other can cross the country to Hollywood, and a job with Betty's Uncle Skip, a detective.

Unfortunately, Skip is dead. But his spirit lives on, mainly in the head of Trixie Moran, who is actually Willie, and the two, plus a narrator who keeps breaking the fourth wall, join forces in order to solve the mystery of Who Killed Skip.

The narrative voice vigorously smashes all the received-wisdom rules of narration, which at times is gleeful and funny and unpredictable, and at other times confusing. Perhaps needlessly confusing, requiring me to go back again to figure out what’s going on and who’s whom.

The pastiche of forties detective fiction was hilarious, and the word-picture of forties Hollywood should appeal not just to long-time Angelinos like myself, but anyone who has watched a lot of period Hollywood films. Less hilarious, at least to me, was the unrelenting bombardment of quips and cleverness that made it very difficult to distinguish between characters’ voices, and sometimes to figure out who is talking, as everyone sounded the same, and the emotional engagement tended to flatten into a same note, causing me to read in snips.

Still, if you’re complaining about the same old same old, and like a dash of panache in your wordplay, give this book a peek. It might be just the ticket for an end-of-summer read.

Cute concept with a lot of flaws in the execution.

The writing is absolutely exhausting. All the slang and alliteration and quippiness would have been fun in small doses, but the constancy of it got obnoxious quickly. Characters' individual voices are also difficult to distinguish during long stretches of dialogue, rendering it confusing and forcing the reader to go back over it to discern what's actually happened.

The book certainly has a sense of humor and some of the witticisms are charming and clever, but on the whole, reading what should have been a light, campy adventure felt like way too much work.

"In the fall of 1947, the pulp-inflected ghost of Skip Ryker—a recently atomized Hollywood detective—hijacks the head of a literarily precocious young woman named Willie Tigue. The results are anything but predictable.

The serpentine saga opens at a New England women’s college, where the ever-playful Betty escapes a meddlesome narrator by slipping her friend Willie a mickey and assuming her identity. Undaunted, the plucky storyteller adopts Willie as her new protagonist and travels with her to L.A.

Meanwhile, the ethereal Ryker—whose corporeal being is reduced to lawn fertilizer when his pool house is provisioned with plastic explosive—tries in vain to solve his untimely demise. What he needs, it quickly becomes apparent, is a willing instrument.

The ensuing collision of these disparate narratives sparks a battle royal for control of Willie’s suggestible psyche—and subsequently, movie rights to the book."

I just love the whole pulp feel of this from cover design to writing!

A delightful tale in which a young college student takes on the identity of one of her friends and ends up running a Los Angeles private eye agency, with the ghost of the agency's former boss perched on her shoulder wisecracking in perfect 1940's noir style.

Willie Tigue and Betty Moran are students at a New England women’s college. Betty switches identities with Wille after slipping her friend a mickey and heads off to take Willie's place at a prestigious college in New York. Willie if left to head for Los Angeles to meet Betty's uncle Skip - a hard-boiled private eye with a dark past. Before she arrives, Skip is blown to pieces and acts as some sort of spirit guide adding his own interfering narration as his fake niece tries to find out who killed him.

We are introduced to a glorious bunch of diverse characters - low budget Hollywood producers, a young sleazy tabloid reporter, would be movie starlets, a Hollywood house boy who's really an FBI agent, crooked L.A. cops - and more plot twists than you can shake a corkscrew at!

The rapid fire dialogue switches from late 1940's jive to outragesous literary observations about sex, some of which would make a crowd of sailors and construction workers blush.

The action fairly races along as Willie takes the identity of her friend Betty before turning into Trixie, a fast talking, gun-toting, whisky swilling private eye who'll stoop to the lowest level to get her way.

You'll need to keep your wits about you to follow the plot and various sub plots, one of which details an incredible love story, featuring a young woman who loses 2 potential husbands in the same week.

A story that will make you smile and laugh out loud. An absolute joy to read and I do hope there's a follow-up.

My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Hush My Inner Sleuth is an unusual book, fueled by early Hollywood scandals, pulp detective stories, and the original hipsters and cool cats.  The framing mechanism used is very clever, but I don’t want to give the surprise away. Readers become acquainted with Willie after her friend Betty takes her place.  Gamely, Willie heads to Hollywood, where she is to work for Betty”s uncle, Skip Riker, a famous detective. Before she arrives, an explosion takes Skip out, and Willie is cast in the role of sharp talking, whiskey swigging detective.  Of course she has competing help in the form of Skip’s ghost and a strange narrator intent on commenting on her thoughts and actions. Is she in a novel? Or are novels dead now that Hollywood talkies are all the rage?


Readers are in for a wild ride, regardless of what they decide.  Hush My Inner Sleuth celebrates Hollywood in its heyday, the glory of pulp detective fiction, and the beginnings of modern feminism.  It is strange, funny, and lots of fun to read. It won’t appeal to everyone, but I expect it will have a home in an academic setting.


4 / 5


I received a copy of Hush My Inner Sleuth from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.


— Crittermom

I didn’t really know what to expect from this book, and it was certainly one of the more unusual reading experiences I’ve had recently.

This is a novel which delights in language and lexicography- I ended up highlighting more lines than not! My favourite moment might have been the self-conscious meta-interjection of the narrator with perfect comic timing, while simultaneously alluding to Pride and Prejudice. I also liked the running discussion at the start about who the first woman to pee in literature was, as it seems like exactly the kind of silly thing me and my friends might debate. The novel is written in the style of a 40s pulp thriller with all its brusque slang- think, extra concentrated Raymond Chandler- which I absolutely loved and had me laughing on almost every page.

However, it gets almost too much at times, to the point it’s hard to understand what is going on in the narrative. The writing is fabulous and the dialogue amusing but there’s not much sense of a plot that grips you from the start- the novel has a much looser vibe to it and feels more like a collection of vignettes. There’s nothing exactly wrong with that, as it’s clear the delight of the novel is in its words and atmosphere, but it didn’t really work for me. I also prefer to read about characters who I can empathise with, rather than exaggerated caricatures, though it works with the style of this book.

Overall, a very distinctive and fun book, but not quite my cup of tea.