The Hidden Assassins

by: Robert Wilson

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Dating Dead Men

Every once in a while an author gives us a first novel which makes us wonder how they will ever surpass it. Dating Dead Men is such a book. Harley Jane Kozak is already known as an actress in movies and on TV, but in my humble estimation, she should have started writing much earlier. Harley Jane Kozak is good; very good. Ms. Kozak is funny and Dating Dead Men sparkles with her clever lines and wit. The plot is just complicated enough to be interesting yet easy to follow, and her sub-plots delightful. Ms. Kozak is right up there with Janet Evanovich, but she doesn't need Trenton, New Jersey – she has her own take on a world every bit as crazy. Welcome to Hollywood, California.

Wollie Shelley runs a greeting card shop (Wollie's Welcome! Greetings) which she hopes to buy. The shop is on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California – but east of Highland Avenue, in a rather depressed district. However, before she can acquire the franchise, and upgrading from Welcome! to Willkommen!, Wollie must pass muster from not only Mr. Bundt, her inspector, but his spies – people who will act and appear as regular customers. Mr. Bundt doesn't care for Wollie's music. Mr. Bundt also doesn't care for the personal call she receives while he's there. It seems that in order to graduate to the status of Willkommen! Wollie's shop must become much more bland and less individualized; thus conforming to Mr. Bundt's idea of welcoming.

In order to secure the necessary cash for buying the shop, Wollie has enrolled in the Dating Project. The project, run by Dr. Cookie Lahven, is research to back up her book, How To Avoid Getting Dumped All The Time. Along with fourteen other women across the United States, Wollie is dating forty eligible bachelors in sixty days, dressing for each date with clothes selected and loaned especially for the project. There's a list describing the perfect match, assimilated by Dr. Lahven, of course. There's also a condition. Wollie may not date any of her assigned partners more than once during the project period, and certainly may not fall in love with any of them.

All this is fine, as long as Wollie can hide her moonlighting from Mr. Bundt. But she gets a strange call from her brother in Rio Pescado, a mental hospital off the Pleasant Valley exit above Thousand Oaks. The call is interrupted, but it's about a murder.

Wollie drives out to see her schizophrenic brother in person, knowing that as long as he takes his medicine, he'll be rational and OK. But on the driveway to the hospital she finds a dead body. She continues on in somewhat of a panic, without calling the police for fear that P.B. is somehow involved. It's after visiting hours when she arrives, but Wollie manages to slip through to her brother's building. Then, when she reaches the elevator she finds a man with a gurney in a doctor's suit, and when two security guards enter the elevator as well, the fake doctor uses Wollie as a hostage to get away.

'Doc' turns out to be a former convict. He also has a pet ferret, named Margaret, that is suddenly left in Wollie's care. Wollie is attracted to Doc in spite of everything against him. Not only is he a convict, but he has a daughter on the edge of adolescence who appears mute – which indicates that Doc is married. He's also shorter than Wollie, has no shoes and no car. Plus he doesn't seem to have a job. All of those things are requirements on The List.

Then Wollie discovers that Doc is being hunted by some very ruthless thugs who think he has something valuable – or knows where it is. Unfortunately, he does know where the item is supposed to have been hidden; he was told by another dying convict – and seen being told by one of the men now hunting him down. Doc tries his best to protect Wollie by not telling her anything, but in the end she knows the entire story.

Between dates with some odd and very unsuitable men, attempting to
hide her extracurricular activities from Mr. Bundt or his spies, taking care of Margaret and trying to help Doc while simultaneously avoiding bullets herself, Wollie is at last confronted in her own card shop by the murderer in the presence of Mr. Bundt. It's only thanks to Doc's daughter and Wollie's quick reaction that the baddie is overcome. Doc's incarceration is explained. The valuable item is found and placed where it belongs. Doc – whose real name is something else – has measured up to most of the items on Wollie's List and asks her to marry him. The story ends happily.

Harley Jane Kozak provides us with a story worthy of any movie or TV script – a TV saga blessedly without any commercials, and full of humor. Wollie's thoughts as penned by Harley Jane Kozak are full of imaginative, witty imagery. Dating Dead Men is as fun to read as it is compelling – you won't want to put it down.

Alan Paul Curtis

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