It all starts with a stolen purse.
Well, actually it all starts because Lulu Dark is an airheaded snob with major issues, and a complete inability to treat people nicely, so someone dumps iced coffee on her suede skirt, and she loses it long enough to lose track of her purse, which gets stolen. Oh, and yeah, she gets her purse stolen at a concert, just after this amazingly gorgeous boy in the band gives her his phone number.
It’s the total pits, but Lulu’s no Nancy Drew: she totally doesn’t want to get her hands dirty and stuff, trying to figure out where her purse. Of course she doesn’t call the police… she’s just sure that this one mean girl took it, and she’s going to beat her up or shake her down, and get it back. But then, someone phones her… and says she is Lulu… and that she wants her cellphone back. So, it’s not that one mean girl? Okay…
Lulu, who obviously hasn’t heard of identity theft, is only mildly upset and confused. But things get more confusing and upsetting in a big hurry when a girl turns up …dead. Well, that, and the fact that someone is impersonating Lulu should make the purse take on kind of a secondary significance… well, no. Yeah, Lulu calls the police this time, but it’s still all about the purse. Remember, this is LULU here, not Nancy. Who cares about other people, nobel ideals or outwitting the bad guys? Dead or alive, someone is going to give back Lulu Dark’s purse.
Kicking and screaming, the anti-Nancy is being dragged into sleuthing, in Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls, the improbable novel by Bennett Madison. Some serious stuff takes place in the story, which is dealt with so quickly in the wrap-up that it seems shallow, including psychosis and a teen’s covered-up death. Bennett Madison seems to have a definite opinion about girls and their shallowness (I’d like to see him write a novel about a guy this harebrained next time), but this novel will still be quite enjoyable for the fashion obsessed and those who don’t like their mysteries to be too Nancy-ambitious. The cover is cute, the novel is a quick read and there’s even a sequel already! For what more could you ask?
By the by, the author of this series? Twenty-three…
Argh! Don’t tell me these things. Apparently I’m having trouble coping with the fact that my window for being a prodigy has long been shut. (Except in the fine art world, where you’re still a young artist in your 30s, and apparently you don’t exist prior to that…)