From AudioFile
Elaine Viets is proof that non-professional doesn't necessarily mean un-professional. Listeners may be accustomed to the best audiobooks being read by polished theatrical voices. It takes only an utterance to recognize that Viets's voice is not that of a seasoned actor, but rather that of an expert storyteller. Listening to Viets read her own works is a delight, especially with a story as outrageous as her first novel, Backstab, in which newsroom politics collide with urban renovations and transvestite beauty pageants. It gets personal for the columnist turned sleuth when, after receiving a series of neo-Nazi hate letters, two of her closest friends are murdered. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher
BACK STAB is a mystery about the newspaper business--which has always been murder. Now someone is killing off readers, and the St. Louis City Gazette can't afford to lose circulation.Gazette columnist Francesca Vierling takes these deaths personally--reliable sources are hard to find--and Francesca's search for the killer takes her into the strange side streets of St. Louis, including a visit to the Miss Gender Bender Pageant, a beauty contest for female impersonators. Along the way Francesca must determine if her own blood soaked past is clouding her view of the future.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The beauty contestant has fabulous clothes, long hair, and great legs. She looks darn good for a woman — and even better for a man. St. Louis￯﾿ﾽ funniest newspaper columnist, Francesca Vierling, is at the transvestite beauty pageant. Nothing is as it seems here. Things have gone haywire in the rest of Francesca￯﾿ﾽs life, too. Someone is killing her friends and sources, and the police claim there￯﾿ﾽs nothing unusual about their deaths. Francesca enters a world where seeing is not believing, to find a killer before he finds her.
Total Mintues: 360

FROM THE CRITICS

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