The Heroine of Dead Ex
Wollie Shelley is about as idiosyncratic and self-effacing as an amateur detective can be. Still sexy in middle-age—as evidenced by the reaction of her lover and FBI agent, Simon Alexander, whenever she takes her clothes off—Wollie, at nearly six feet tall, never claims to be brave. In fact, her knees shake at the idea of speaking in public. She is, however, artistic and resourceful.
A freelance greeting card designer, Wollie never seems to be able to make ends meet. Thus, she goes from living with her boyfriend to living in a storage locker to living in the creepy, if extravagant home of her best friend whom the police suspect of having murdered two men—her lover and her husband. It’s also why Wollie is willing to pick up truly odd jobs, like being the dating correspondent for a sleazy talk show called SoapDirt, but which help her to get the inside scoop on potential suspects in her murder quest.
The Plot of Dead Ex
Producer David Zetrakis, one of Wollie’s former lovers, is found dead in his Los Angeles home, shot in the head. But he was going to die anyway, from cancer. Who would kill a man already in the last days of his life and why? That’s what Wollie has to find out in order to exonerate her best friend, former soap star Joey Rafferty, who is tops on the police’s and the media’s list of murder suspects. When Joey’s current husband goes missing, and his body washes up onto the beach a few days after the Zetrakis murder, Joey herself goes into hiding. But Wollie can’t help her friend if she can’t find her. And is Joey really hiding? Or has someone harmed her in some way?
While Wollie works to solve the murders and find her best friend, she is also trying to hold onto a rocky relationship with Simon, whose secretive life often leaves Wollie on the outside looking in. And as if her own life wasn’t complicated enough, her schizophrenic brother, P.B., is in the midst of a transition that he can’t accomplish without Wollie’s help.
Characters to Love, Dialogue that Enthralls
Dead Ex is populated with the most bizarre, but real-life characters imaginable. Wollie’s other best friend, Fredreeq is supportive but doesn’t hesitate to tell it as she sees it. And Apollo, a young Greek university student, whose entire family is living temporarily with Wollie’s unconventional Uncle Theo, is a technological wunderkind with an insatiable curiosity.
And then there are all the people who inhabit the world of soap operas, from eccentric and egocentric actors and actresses, to production assistants, to costumers and prop men.
The narrative of Dead Ex is quirky, off-beat, and hilarious. The dialogue is written with such skill and nuance readers will feel like they are eavesdropping on real people.
To top it off, Kozak imbues her storyline with metaphors of Greek gods and heroes, as seen by the very un-heroic (in her own estimation) Wollie, who’s struggling to read the Iliad, and keeps finding the most unlikely parallels to her own suddenly off-kilter world. No need for the Cliff Notes; readers of this mystery will come away having learned something about Greek mythology without even trying.
About Author Harley Jane Kozak
Harley Jane Kozak knows whereof she writes. She is an actress with numerous TV and movie credits including Parenthood, Arachnophobia, and When Harry Met Sally. She is intimately familiar with the world of soaps, having acted in The Guiding Light. Kozak’s first two novels, Dating Dead Men [Broadway; 2005] and Dating is Murder [Broadway; 2006], also feature the inimitable Wollie Shelley.
Dead Ex is published by Doubleday [2007; ISBN: 978-0385518024].
 |
