Product Description

Different Women Dancing is the hit debut of the Dr. Clare Burtonall series--a surprising and exotic new offering from one of Penguin's bestselling mystery authors, Jonathan Gash. Different Women Dancing stars Dr. Clare Burtonall, a beautiful and bright British medical doctor. Heading home from the hospital one day, Clare comes upon a fatal traffic accident and uneasily remembers the victim as a business contact of her husband. But when he won't answer any of her questions, Clare suspects her spouse may not be the man she married. To uncover the truth, Clare needs access to the city's underworld and asks Bonn, a sexy, street smart Romeo-for-hire for help, opening a Pandora's box of corruption and crime. Then Clare makes what may be the most surprising discovery of them all: a startling need for more than information from her suave, attractive partner, who introduces Clare to the dark side of the city and a darker, more powerful side of herself.
Viking will publish Prey Dancing, the second Dr. Clare Burtonall mystery, in August 1998

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1352854 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Library Journal
Breaking for the moment with his beloved PI, antiques dealer Lovejoy, Gash introduces a new series featuring Dr. Clare Burtonall, a substitute-physician. Clare's life is changed forever when she attempts to save the victim of a fatal traffic accident; someone delivers the victim's stolen briefcase to her rich husband, raising unruly suspicions. Clare soon teams up with another would-be Samaritan, a well-spoken (but streetwise) male escort called Bonn, to uncover corruption and murder. As usual, Gash imbues his prose with bouncy vigor, ready wit, and colorful slang?focused here on the sex trade and gambling. Told with the author's accustomed panache; highly recommended.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Here's something very curious from the creator of the Lovejoy novels. Gash introduces a new series character, cardiologist Dr. Clare Burtonall, but the novel is practically stolen from her by Bonn, the soft-spoken and mysterious male prostitute who helps Clare investigate a suspicious road accident. Lovejoy fans prepare for a shock: if this first novel is any indication, Gash's new series will be a lot rougher than his stories about the popular antique dealer. The novel is written in the language of the underworld, where people are coarse, sex is a commodity, and murder is sometimes the logical solution to a tricky problem. Perhaps in the series' next installment, Clare will emerge as a stronger heroine, but here the central character (by accident or design) is the charismatic Bonn--a truly remarkable creation who seems to be many things but is probably none of them. Different Women Dancing seems as though it might not be quite what Gash intended it to be. But it is, nevertheless, a compelling novel. David Pitt

From Kirkus Reviews
That rascal Lovejoy never could resist the ladies, so it's only natural that when Gash put the antiquer/swindler/raconteur aside after 19 adventures (The Possessions of a Lady, 1996, etc.), he'd turn to an even more devout worshipper of female charm. In the case of his new hero, an illicit escort calling himself Bonn, an ex-seminarian capable of transforming himself into every woman's fantasy, devotion is essential to professional success. But Dr. Clare Burtonall, the physician who wants to pay for Bonn's time, isn't looking for fantasy; she recognizes Bonn as a witness to a traffic fatality from which the victim's briefcase disappeared--a briefcase that a courier duly delivered that night to her husband Clifford. Was insurance agent Leonard Mostern's death nothing more than an unfortunate accident? What does Clifford have to do with it? What will Clare make of the knowledge that the efficient Bonn, who ``talk[s] like a fairground guess-your-weight machine,'' is rapidly amassing for her? And is it really true that her relationship with this suave gigolo has no room for fantasy after all? A smooth, sexy suspenser fortified by Gash's trademark bits of frantically dispensed inside information about prostitution, cardiology, and car bombs. The alternation between Clare's and Bonn's points of view produces an effervescent effect of Lovejoy and sparkling water. The promised series is cause for rejoicing. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Deeply Excellent
This is one of my favorite novels. It's not easy, no, but it's damn near brilliant--so much so that I'm at a loss to describe its qualities. If you're looking for an amusing, run-of-the-mill mystery, give this a miss. If you're looking for a series just like Lovejoy, only different, this is not that. But if you're looking for an excellent writer at the top of his game, writing about a world that is dense, skewed, and fascinating--with characters who don't fit any neat little boxes--and are willing to pay attention, you will be more than amply rewarded. Maybe this isn't a 'genre' book. I suspect that, somewhere down the line, it was not marketed properly--perhaps it couldn't have been. But--at least to this reader--it's a work of staggering art and imagination.

Sex, medicine, real estate - a winning combination.
Fans of Jonathan Gash, author of the acclaimed Lovejoy series, will be intrigued by the new setting and characters in this book. Clare Burtonall is a doctor; Bonn an enigmatic and skilfull "goer", a paid escort deeply involved in the underworld of the gritty urban scene they both inhabit. Murder draws them ever closer in a heady atmosphere involving real estate development, medicine, sex-for-hire, and fast-moving violence. Gash is a master of language. He rushes his story at you with a new vocabulary, leaving you gasping and struggling to comprehend, but slipping in enough flashes of clarity to keep you understanding events as they rush by. Female readers may agree that he has come close to answering Freud's famous question. What women want may just be someone like Bonn.

Very Strange
I didn't expect a "Lovejoy" type of new series from Gash; maybe something very different. But this book is a true oddity. It begins slow, becomes more interesting in the second half and then peters out; the momentum doesn't carry through. The dialogue is close to indecipherable and makes for very slow going. The concept of the relationship between the two major characters is interesting, which is why I gave it 3 and not 2 stars.