We all need harmless little fluff books in our lives, and this is one of the fluffiest.
It’s 1964 and 22 year old Elizabeth “Bebe” Bennett, recently out of secretarial school in Richmond, Virginia, is loving her new independent life in New York. A month out from her move from Richmond, Virginia, she has a job as the secretary to the dreamy Bradley Williams, vice president of talent company Rip City Records. Bebe spends her days hard at work, daydreaming about the future when after Bradley gets tired of his womanizing ways, he’ll sweep her off her feet and make her the mother to his 2.5 children. However, while she’s waiting her roommate, 25 year old Texan airline stewardess Darlene Rowland, has scored them a double date with two members of Philip Royal and the Beefeaters, the latest Beatles knockoff that Rip City has just happened to sign on. However when they get to the hotel, they discover someone has electrocuted Philip in his bath. With Darlene as the prime suspect, can Bebe clear her name, uncover the true killer, and get Bradley, she means Mr. Williams, to take advantage of her daringly risque 2-inch above the knee skirts?
I bought this book in Walmart in 2005 when it first came out, so that tells you the type of book this is. It’s airport bookstore quality, great for flights or even dragging onto the beach. It’s cute and a quick read, not taking itself too seriously.
Bebe and Darlene are the two ends of the Sixties spectrum; Bebe is your typical brunette Southern belle, fresh-faced, virginal and slightly naive, wearing her Emeraude perfume with her Mary Quant lipgloss and her Jackie Kennedy suits, Darlene and her fiery red hair and fiery Texan temper with her Chanel No. 5 and her mini skirts, joining the Mile High Club and hooking up with Stu the Stew Bum, sole heir to the Minty-Mouth Breath Mint Company. Believe me, the fact that Bebe is a brunette from Virginia and that Darlene is a redhead with a fiery temper from Texas can not be forgotten; they’re brought up almost every time the two are on the page; it’s like Rita Moreno being Italian in The Four Seasons. And yes, Bebe’s mother, being a Jane Austen fan of course had to name a child Elizabeth as soon as she married a man with the last name of Bennett, because everyone wants to be named after literary characters.
Bradley is the typical dashing love interest boss; his shirts in the closet of his executive washroom as to be readily available for him to change on his way out to his dates with buxom, fabulously dressed models. (Would it surprise you that while Darlene is petite but also busty, Bebe is 5’7″ and built with narrow hips and a small, 34-A bust? Didn’t surprise me in the slightest; I know these kind of books). He keeps whisky in his office bar, has a key to the Playboy Club, and calls Bebe “Kid” while apparently admiring that she’s all woman. With his beautiful blue eyes, tousled dirty-blond hair, his full lips, his tanned skin, he’s everything Bebe wants in a man whose initials she wants to add to her monogram. And he wants Bebe too, but he knows (and Darlene knows, and Harry, the local drunk bum who Bebe gives money to knows) that Bebe is the one woman who could make him settle down, but he’s just not ready to do that yet.
Honestly, everyone in this book just come across as ’60’s archetypes; which in a more seriously written book might be annoying. You have your angry Brits, your drunk lower class Brits, your “they’re in a band so they do drugs” (gasp! shock! horror!) Brits, women who are models in a “British Playboy” kind of way, nosy reporters, sleazy talent scouts, overbearing Southern fathers, hard hitting detectives; you get them all. The Beefeaters are so obviously based on the Beatles, down to a Cynthia and Julian Lennon homage.
If you want some light, harmless reading that won’t tax your brain but will make you smile, pick this up.