Watching him suffer, tormented and drastically changing daily was very intense. Will Ellis be able to pull it together? Or will he slowly self destruct?Įllis, very flawed and on the brink of madness was still very likable (to me). Doesn't help that Emily wants him to kill off Jenna, an act that will cause fan uproar and devastate his career. Soon Ellis finds himself so lost in despair, his life starts to spin out of control. He is tormented by memories of a woman (Chloe) he once loved, but broke her heart. He meets who he thinks is the 'perfect woman' Emily. Highly recommended.Įllis Crawford is a famous and successful Author of the Jenna Crane Mystery Series. This novel is a very enjoyable read, with believable characters and a cleverly constructed plot. So which cat is drinking Ellis’s saucers of milk? And should we care? Maybe we should. Minniver, Chloe’s much-loved cat – but sometimes, like Macavity, he is not there. I was convinced that these were real people living in London, especially Chloe’s Uncle Charles, who seemed immediately familiar, shrewd and sharp beneath his deliberately bumbling exterior. Lynette Sofras has a gift for natural-sounding dialogue and the subtle interactions between men and women. In the end he is indeed a sadder and a wiser man, but just how this comes about is a twist that I failed to foresee, even though the clues are there to be found. There are, of course, reasons why Ellis is the way he is, but they emerge only gradually.

When Ellis dumps the too-loving Chloe and in his turn becomes besotted with the self-assured, sleek and golden but unreliable Emily, I began to hope that this conceited but also rather pathetic man would get his comeuppance. We have all known women like this some of us may even have been women like this. So does the sweet-natured Chloe, who falls so selflessly in love with him that she is bound to suffer.

Hence, in more ways than one, Ellis finds himself trapped by his own creation.Īs a man who has an eye for a pretty woman, and knows just how attractive to women he can be, but is essentially selfish, he comes across very convincingly. Deadlines and Hollywood commitments loom. However, his ruthless agent Lou, knows that the crime novels are money-spinners and will not let him stop writing them.

He has a high opinion of himself, his literary abilities and especially his political views, although he is cautiously secretive about these. It swiftly changes into the story of the successful writer of crime novels, the very believable Ellis Crawford, who is tired of turning out pot-boiler after pot-boiler featuring the feisty Jenna Crane, and yet his income depends on his doing just that. This begins like a crime novel, but do not be misled.

Killing Jenna Crane by Lynette Sofras