Know How I Said I Was Back? Not So Much

Remember how I mentioned last time I'd been having some health problems? Well, they're ongoing. Nothing too serious, but debilitating enough that basically all I've got the energy for is working, reading, and sleeping. Lots of sleeping. Blogging? Not really on the agenda right now. So while I may pop in now and again, you can consider me on the dreaded hiatus until I get my innards seen to.

As long as I'm here, though, let me just say this about that. Did you ever have an old friend you hadn't seen in a while, and then you got together, and suddenly you realized that all his little jokes were really racist, or all she could talk about was dieting? That's kind of how I'm feeling in rereading the Smith and Wetzon mysteries by Annette Meyers. I really liked these books back in the day, and I kept them when sorting through Mom's collection, but on reflection, I have to wonder what it was I saw in them. The heroine, Leslie Wetzon, a former Broadway dancer turned Wall Street headhunter, is a terrible investigator; especially in the first book (The Big Killing), she consistently withholds information, tampers with evidence, lies for no reason, and fails to ask the crucial and obvious questions.

I can't blame her entirely for her dysfunctional relationships with her partner and cop boyfriend, though, because however prickly and defensive she is, neither one of them is any prize. Smith is materialistic, greedy, narcissistic, and manipulative (cue obligatory "and those are her good points"), while Silvestri is the sort of emotionally closed off guy who compartmentalizes so thoroughly he doesn't introduce Wetzon to his mother until they've been practically living together for 5 years.

The one thing I am digging is the way these books are a positive time capsule of a certain Manhattan yuppie milieu of the 1980s, complete with designer labels, hip restaurants, and a time before cell phones. But somehow I don't think that was what I found cool at the time when I too was running around looking for a phone booth.