Review: "A Dangerous Fiction," by Barbara Rogan

A savvy yet insecure heroine, a desperate wanna-be author and a stable of writers—from the famous to the struggling—combine to make A Dangerous Fiction a suspenseful read with a keen insight into the world of publishing.

Author Barbara Rogan has worked both sides of the desk, as scribe and agent, so the details of Jo Donovan’s career as head of Hamish and Donovan, a powerful New York literary agency, are vivid and believable. 

As the story opens, Jo is still mourning the death of her husband, Hugo, a larger-than-life author and one of the founders of the agency. Her work life, however, is going well. True, Harriet Peagoody, the other agent in the firm, resents the fact that Jo has taken over. But the young assistants, Chloe and Jean-Paul, are fabulous, and dowdy secretary Lorna is uber-efficient.

The agency’s clients include Rowena Blair, a flamboyant bestselling romance writer; Max Messinger, an FBI profiler turned thriller writer; Gordon Hayes, a former Marine, ex-monk dog trainer; and Edwina Lavelle, a first-time literary novelist. But there’s one writer who hasn’t been invited to join the group, and he’s furious about it.

Jo doesn’t know who he is. He confronts her one night, wearing a trench coat and a fedora pulled over his eyes, so she dubs him “Sam Spade.” Sam can’t believe his manuscript was returned. “If anyone had bothered to read it, they’d have recognized it for the work of genius that it is,” he tells Jo.

After this unsettling experience, life goes downhill for Jo. Her laptop goes missing while she’s at a conference. Though it turns up later, it may have been hacked. The agency’s clients are receiving e-mails, allegedly signed by Jo, telling them they have been offered fantastic book deals. Unfortunately, they haven’t.

Is this Sam Spade’s revenge? The threats against Jo escalate, but her clients and friends come to her rescue. Gordon lends her one of his trained guard dogs, Mingus, while Max puts his FBI skills and connections to good use.

Jo needs all the help she can get, as complications and suspects abound. Teddy Pendragon is a pesky biographer who is determined to write about Hugo’s life, and Jo is afraid of what he might turn up. Her recollections of her life with her famous husband are sometimes sketchy.

“You can take my recollections to the bank. I remember every day of the ten years I spent with Hugo,” she tells Pendragon.

“And yet others remember things differently,” is his response.

Meanwhile, her friend Molly Hamish, the other original partner in the agency, is dying of cancer. Then there’s the police detective who’s assigned to her case. Tommy Cullen is the boyfriend she ditched to marry Hugo. And is Harriet really conspiring with Charlie Malvino, the agent Jo fired after he published snarky summations of slush-pile submissions on his blog?

Two in Jo’s circle will be killed before her ordeal ends. Jo’s enemy has roots deep in her past—in those memories she has tried to obscure for so long. She regrets she didn’t face facts sooner, but ultimately resolves to move ahead, with eyes wide open, to whatever life brings her next.