cover image Date with a Plummeting Publisher: A Midge Cohen Mystery

Date with a Plummeting Publisher: A Midge Cohen Mystery

Toni Brill. St. Martin's Press, $17.95 (234pp) ISBN 978-0-312-08753-1

Toni Brill is the pen name of a couple who might also be comedy writers, given all the snappy one-liners they've sprinkled through their second Midge Cohen mystery (after Date with a Doctor ) . Once again we find New Yorker Midge on a date with a soon-to-be-dead gentleman (``It's my new line of work! Hit dating!'' she later tells her mother). He is Simon Brent-Waterhouse, ``premier publisher of emigre and dissident Russian literature,'' and aspiring novelist Midge, a former professor of Russian, accompanies him to a dinner honoring sexy new literary sensation Polina Volkova. Many are eager to publish the autobiography she is writing, A Hooker for the KGB , to which Simon happily holds the rights. So it seems peculiar that he should throw himself down an air shaft several hours later. Suspicious Midge plunges into an investigation, turning up elements of international intrigue that require more suspension of disbelief than many readers will readily muster. Although the action culminates in a simultaneously hilarious and terrifying set-piece, this remains a fast and funny ado about little. (Apr.)