Helpful Score: 3
Libraries all over the world are supposed to have categorized Midnight in The Garden of Good And Evil as non-fiction, except in Savannah, Georgia where they swore it was fiction. Using the same logic and a review of Randys posts to 4MA, look for this book in Fallbrook, California under biography, H. The Baby Game is one of those rare books where the improbable works seamlessly. The serious parts make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle and the funny parts are laugh out loud hilarious. An ex Peace Corps, assistant tennis pro, home schooled California attorney, who drives a Ford falcon convertible with a wooden cigar store Indian permanently wedged in the passenger seat sounds like the loser of a Dumb and Dumber contest, but Toby Dillon turns out to be believable, lovable, and competent, in roughly that order. The plot is deliciously twisty and at the halfway point, I still had no idea who the bad guys were. I mean, although there is real jeopardy, there is still some question at that point as to whether a crime had even been committed. Well, actually Toby was well along the way to the five felonies he commits in the course of the book, but otherwise...All is well that ends well and the ending of The Baby Game - And then I kissed her. The best way to describe it, The Baby Game is similar to Lawrence Sanders McNally series, only a whole lot better.
Helpful Score: 3
First Toby Dillon mystery, in which the adoption attorney sets out to find a young birth mother who apparently deceived him and the adoptive parents of a little girl by not telling them that she was carrying twins. Now the mother and other baby have both scarpered, and the adoptive parents, a pair of Hollywood celebs, are heartbroken that their baby will grow up without her twin sister and they all get involved in trying to find them despite the fact that they have no legal claim to the other child. Very humorously written early on especially but the tone changes to more somber about mid-book; poignant and heartbreaking at times, too. Of course with Hollywood involved, you know there has to be secrets, scandal and blackmail involved somewhere and it all complicates things terribly for Toby, who is not only the celeb couple's adoption attorney but their best friend too.
