Publishers Weekly Reviews The Damage Done

Before Publishers Weekly reviewed THE DAMAGE DONE, I was on tenterhooks. Would they find my fiction debut interesting, or would they hate it? Those seemed like the only two possibilities. I wasn’t prepared for a rave, but that’s what I got. It took me a few tries to read PW’s review successfully. Here it is in full:

08/02/2010 Fiction
The Damage Done
Hilary Davidson, Forge, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2697-3
In Davidson’s razor sharp mystery debut, travel journalist Lily Moore, who’s been living in Spain, rushes home to Manhattan’s Lower East Side on learning that her younger sister, Claudia, a recovering heroin addict, has apparently drowned in her bathtub on the anniversary of their mother’s suicide. The corpse in the morgue, however, is that of a stranger who’d been posing as Claudia for months. So where’s Claudia? An increasingly frantic Lily launches her private investigation while NYPD detectives Norah Renfrew and hunky “Brux” Bruxton oversee the official one. As Lily dodges the amorous attentions of Martin Sklar, her wealthy ex-boyfriend, who she suspects might’ve had a secret affair with Claudia, she discovers Claudia’s connection to a recently deceased “pseudopsychologist” who had a habit of getting too involved with his female patients. Davidson, herself a travel journalist (Frommer’s Toronto 2010), offers a great portrait of sisterly love, despite a dysfunctional past, as well as a highly satisfying mystery. (Oct.)

I get a shiver every time I read it (though I’ve stopped worrying that PW will issue a correction… most of the time). After a dozen years as a freelance writer, I’m prepared for rejection. Enthusiasm is another story.

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