The Sunday Trumpet---It's All in a Name

Full Speed
By Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes
St. Martin's Paperbacks
2003


I'm starting my review with a general complaint of a trend.

It used to be that very prolific authors would use pseudonyms in order not to flood the market with their work---or to cross genres. Stephen King, Catherine Cookson and Gwendoline Butler come to mind as examples.

Now in the days of "Name-Brand Marketing", less-prolific but still phenomenally successful authors are doing just the opposite. They're slapping their name on every piece of shit that comes down the pooper and calling themselves a "co-writer", just to line their pockets.

It's no longer about giving readers quality writing. It's about trading in on Name-Brand recognition. Like John Elway Subaru.

The author V.C. Andrews died in 1986, after writing 8 books. She didn't write her 30+ subsequent bestsellers via Miss Cleo the phone psychic for the last 20 years--her estate hired horror novelist Andrew Neiderman (whose identity was kept secret for a number of years) to write under her name, which was a tremendous sales asset.

You could put her name on a book about harnessing gophers, and it would still sell a gazillion copies. Just throw a little incest in there and the sheeples don't even know it's about gophers.

James Patterson, the author of the Alex Cross series is doing it.

Unfortunately now one of my favorite authors, Janet Evanovitch is doing it as well.

Janet--What were you thinking?

I've been a fan for years. I eagerly await each new installment of your Plum series. You're already a best-selling author. Is squeezing your loyal readers for additional dough more important than integrity?

How could you pass this dookie off as your own work?

Here is a letter from Janet to her readers introducing her new writing "partnership", and my response to it:

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the world of Jamie Swift and Max Holt! My good friend Charlotte Hughes and I have teamed up to create a series of books...

Dear Janet,

Dump Charlotte. Her writing is terrible. As Dorothy Parker once said, "This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

... featuring these two characters and they've taken on a life of their own!

As opposed to what? A petri dish full of dead cow pox?

These books are not set in the same world as my Stephanie Plum novels,

They aren't even in the same UNIVERSE as your Stephanie Plum novels--much to the woe of the dupe who plunks down 8 bucks for this miserable sack of hair.

but what they have in common is lovable, dysfunctional characters, villains you love to hate, and a cross-eyed way of looking at life.

I was already beginning to get cross-eyed by the end of the first chapter. And felt more than a little dysfunctional.

Jamie and Max have intense chemistry-even though they drive each other crazy.

Yeah, all those trite, tired cliches do tend to make brain cells hurt. I'm feeling a little postal myself.

Max thinks Jamie is a magnet for trouble and Jamie thinks Max is the most annoyingly sexy, mysterious man she's ever met.

Sexy? Ha. Annoying? An understatement!

She knows she should stay away from him.

And she should have. Then we could have all gone home and put an end to this craptastic series.

But boy, oh boy, do the sparks fly when they get together. Jamie is a newspaper owner from a small southern town. And in Full Speed, she's after the story of a lifetime.

Well it certainly isn't this one!

Max Holt is right in the middle of that story, and so Jamie tracks down the millionaire playboy, forcing him to take her on as partner. What follows is a story of a corrupt minister, a gang of mobsters on the loose, a hound dog called Fleas, a wise-cracking computer genius, and lots of love in the fast lane.

He has a freaking car that talks! Does David Hasselhoff know you've been stealing his plot lines?

Not to mention plenty of steamy action between Jamie and Max.

Frankly, I got more excited remembering a really creepy sex dream I had about Louie Anderson in Spongebob shorts. Don't ask. I ate cheese before bedtime. I swear. But it was hot.

So have fun with Full Speed. We're going to sign off now and get back to creating more romantic adventures between Jamie Swift and Max Holt.

Please. I beg of you. Don't.

Enjoy and happy reading!

I'd rather eat paint.

Janet and Charlotte

Janet, how could you?
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