A Little Trouble with the Facts, Nina Siegal

Reviewed by Lauren Smelcher

I have serious chick-lit fatigue. Don't get me wrong: I loved Bridget Jones's Diary and Bergdorf Blondes as much as the next girl, but the formula is wearing a little thin. It's a familiar drill: fabulous girl meets bump in the road, is assisted by boy (who she doesn't yet realise is her One True Love), overcomes said bump and acknowledges that she and the boy should live happily ever after together. Unfortunately, it's only clever the first 5000 times. Still, I aim to give all books a chance (and also peace), so I approached Nina Siegal's A Little Trouble with the Facts with an open mind.

The brief? Valerie Vane is New York's most dangerous gossip. She's the toast of the town (mainly because nobody can afford to annoy her) until she winds up on the bathroom floor of the city's hottest nightclub during a coke binge. Disgraced, she's exiled to her newspaper's obituary section, where she promptly becomes involved in solving a murder. Duh. And whaddya know? Along the way, she falls in love with a boy. Double duh.

My problem with this book isn't that it's too simplistic - it's that it's trying to be more complex than it really needs to be. Case in point: Siegal uses way too many characters and plot twists than are necessary, taking some of the 'thrill' out of this supposed 'thriller'. (Come on, how scary can a character be if you can't understand who they are?)

Parts of the book are witty - but not frequently enough. Valerie's constant references to film noir become tiresome and add little to the plot. The verdict? It's a little too miss and not enough hit.