RUN JANE RUN

Sexy pseudonymous mystery writer Jane Nichols is back, enduring nasty Georgia snakes and passionate interludes with Savannah Police Chief Alex Callaghan. For those who didn’t catch Tan’s debut, AKA Jane (1997), her heroine might best be described as The Avengers” Emma Peel with an inexplicable ability to write dreadful whodunits that sell fabulously. As a secret agent with MI5, Jane is content to hide in plain sight in Savannah on the arm of her police chief lover, at least until Callaghan takes a bullet from an assailant and, in what must be feverish delirium, mentions that he’d like her to have his baby. Next, London’s calling with another mission for her. Hugh Winthrup, the twerpy nephew of MP Sir William Winthrup, is being held hostage at Winthrup’s Scottish manor. Jane, along with her trusty cross-dressing sidekick John Wiggins, accompanies an SAS antiterrorist squad to free a boy who, when Jane shoots most of his captors, seems to be staging the abduction merely to infuriate his uncle. The incident, and the color of Hugh’s eyes, jog Jane’s memory about her parents’ assassination: Did Sir William, who has the same yellowish brown eyes, order the killing? Jane begins having nightmares about him that wake her up just in time to escape the firebombing of her London apartment. She guesses (rightly) that she’s being used by her avuncular MI5 chief Douglas MacDonald to lure Sir William, or whoever was responsible for her parents’ deaths, out of hiding. She hops back across the Atlantic into the eager arms of Callaghan, now being menaced on the job and off by maliciously placed poisonous snakes. Tan’s blend of gruesomely detailed violence and over-the-top plotting works best when it falls just inside of parody—as when, while cooking for her lover, Jane can’t help thinking of survivalist stews of live cockroaches. Short, sweet, and silly.