Missing reels

The author has a good sense of New York in the 1980s (before it was cleaned up and sanitized) and she obviously knows her movies, but as a novelist she has some obvious weaknesses. Giving the heroine a great wardrobe, two gay roommates and wisecracking dialogue does not make her a complete characters. Similarly, the hero may have a British accent and a similar propensity for snappy comebacks, but he's cheating on his fiance for the entire novel (and the heroine doesn't seem to mind), so it's hard to warm up to him. The mystery about the heroine's downstairs neighbor and the missing silent movie isn't as interesting as the author thinks it is, and the stakes never feel high enough to keep the plot going. Overall a disappointing read.