Flamingos and Frying Pans

Take one food writer named Cranky Agnes, add a hitman named Shane, mix them together with a Southern mob wedding, a missing necklace, two annoyed flamingos, and a dog named Rhett, and you've got a recipe for a sexy, hilarious novel about the disastrous side of true love...

Agnes Crandall's life goes awry when a dognapper invades her kitchen one night, seriously hampering her attempts to put on a wedding that she's staked her entire net worth on. Then a hero climbs through her bedroom window. His name is Shane - no last name, just Shane - and he has his own problems: He's got a big hit scheduled, a rival trying to take him out, and an ex-mobster uncle asking him to protect some little kid named Agnes. When he finds out that Agnes isn't so little, that his uncle has forgotten to mention a missing five million bucks he might have lost in Agnes's house, and that his last hit was a miss, Shane's life isn't looking so good, either. Then a bunch of lowlifes come looking for the money, a string of hitmen show up for Agnes, and some wedding guests gather with the intent to throw more than rice. Agnes and Shane have their hands full with greed, florists, treachery, flamingos, mayhem, mothers of the bride, and - most dangerous of all - each other.

Title: Agnes and the Hitman
Author: Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer
Start & Finished: 2/11/08-2/12/08
Published: 2007
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pages: 368
Genre: Contemporary-Romance, Mystery

If you take a little Janet Evanovich, blend it with Mary Kay Andrews, and then toss in a little more mob you get Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer’s mystery, romance, women’s fiction novel Agnes and the Hitman.

I’ve read a few of Jennifer Crusie’s books before and they have never disappointed me. However, Bob Mayer is a new author for me but since I really loved this book I might pick up something of his. I will most definitely pick up the other novel Crusie and Mayer collaborated on together Don’t Look Down. The fact that I loved this collaboration so much kind of surprised me at first because I’ve always shied away from dual authored books. You can tell there are two different “voices” telling the story (it switches from Agnes’ point of view to the hitman Shane’s point of view) but it blends together very well.

Cranky Agnes is such an awesome character! She’s nurturing, cooks like a dream, and of course is very cranky when crossed. I actually loved all of the characters in the book, even the supposedly bad guys (except for that one evil person of course) and of course Agnes’ bloodhound Rhett is quite the character too.

This romantic, madcap adventure is truly a partnership between it’s authors and it’s characters and we get the best of both worlds. There are some great twists and turns in this funny, sweet, light read that you won’t forget any time soon.




The authors of this book, Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer have their own personal websites as well as the collaborative one above and this blog too (but it hasn’t been updated since December).

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