Quite a few years ago, the author of this book and I were both members of a sadly now defunct "international journalism community" called BlueEar -- it's the site that commissioned and published the first version of my satirical novel The Dragons of Manhattan. At some stage Bryant mentioned in passing that, a couple of decades back, she'd written a detective novel that had been much admired by the feminists of the day. Naturally, out of interest, I went online and bought myself a copy. Before I'd gotten around to reading it, though, there was yet another tsunamic influx of books into the house and Killing Wonder was submerged. The other day, though, I spotted it . . . and its moment had arrived.

While the central character, the victim and almost all the major support characters are female, I'm not absolutely sure why this should have been hailed as a feminist book; perhaps the cultural climate in the US in 1981 was different from that obtaining in the UK. Leave that aside, though. After a slightly creaky start, this becomes a joyously entertaining cozy mystery that also has quite a lot to say about the matter of being a writer -- not about writing, not about the book trade, but about how authors interact with each other and and are supported and/or preyed upon by the reading public.

Decades ago San Francisco author India Wonder wrote a roman a clef that has been a bestseller ever since, the inspiration of countless young female writers including our heroine Jessie Posey. But India has never written a book since then, although it's widely acknowledged that she's in the final stages of a new book, again a roman a clef, this time eviscerating her closest literary associates . . . all of whom have been invited to the party where India, mid-declaim, drops dead of cyanide poisoning. Everyone there but Jessie has a motive.

Promptly recruited as aide by handsome cop Jim, Jessie begins probing the mystery, interviewing varyingly eccentric members of the dead author's circle and herself being threatened by an anonymous phonecaller who plagues those involved. The book dances cheerfully along -- a very funny seance is a highlight -- until reaching its three denouements, the first two of which are plausible but incorrect solutions and the third of which is the correct (and most satisfying) one.
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