Almost True Confessions: Closet Sleuth Spills All

O’Connor’s droll second romantic suspenser featuring incorrigibly curious Manhattan copy editor Miranda “Rannie” Bookman (after 2007’s Dangerous Admissions) finds the divorced mother of two barely scraping by on freelance assignments from friends and former colleagues like Ellen Donahoe and handouts from loaded ex-mother-in-law Mary Lorimar. Which helps explain Rannie’s excitement when Ellen hires her to handle the new top-secret tell-all on sainted society grande dame Charlotte Cummings by notorious celebrity skewerer Ret Sullivan—that is, until Rannie goes to pick up the manuscript and finds Ret’s body. A second murder puts Rannie on the sleuthing trail in earnest. As Rannie’s increasingly dangerous digging takes her from Cummings’s Palladian-style manse to a gala at the Metropolitan Museum, O’Connor serves up plenty of glitz and tangy social satire. The actual multiple murder mystery, however, never rises above the level of a last-suspect-standing TV movie. Agent: Doug Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.)