Revenge of the Cootie Girls (Robin Hudson Series #3) by Sparkle Hayter

From the Publisher

Now that she's executive producer of Special Reports, Robin Hudson is feeling (relatively) settled. She is fairly content to be a sympathetic ear to her insane girlfriends and to be in a steady non-relationship with several sometime boyfriends (it's not too hard when none of them lives in New York all the time - and when your fear of commitment is slightly greater than your desire for emotional security). Okay, she's bored. In an effort to feel useful, she has taken under her wing a new intern, wide-eyed small-town girl Kathy Loblaws, and invited her along on a Girls' Night Out - a semiregular frenzy of female bonding meant to alleviate Robin's goilfriends' love crises and her own ennui. It's Halloween, and Kathy doesn't show - but telephones from a strange man's closet. Aided by her pals, Tamayo (now a full-time comic), Claire (ever the rising star), and Sally the bald witch, who has a Princeton degree and monitors everyone's karma, Robin must track down her errant charge through one long night of murder and mayhem, costumes and concealed weapons, men who are not what they seem (are they ever?), and unsettling deja vu. For Robin slowly comes to realize that the search for her missing intern is really a deadly trip into the past, fueled by an old curse.

Publishers Weekly

It's Halloween, a fitting night for this latest tale featuring genial, mildly lunatic Robin Hudson, executive producer of the Special Reports unit of the All News Network (last seen in Nice Girls Finish Last). Robin has asked her intern, Kathy, to join her and some friends for a special Girls' Night Out. But Kathy doesn't show up and then clues-resembling those written by Robin's childhood friend Julie long ago-crop up, ostensibly related to a murder mystery game to benefit a charity. Robin enlists her friends Tamayo, Claire and Sally to follow the clues and search for Kathy on a trail that leads Robin down memory lane. Everywhere the clues send them is a place that Robin and Julie went in 1979, when they were small-town Minnesota girls in New York for the first time in 1979, with two men they picked up. And many of the clues refer to their shared past as cootie girls-high-school social outcasts. As the night wears on, Robin learns that the man named George wasn't just a rich guy out on the town, but a gangster who was being pursued by the man she and Julie thought was his friend. She also finds a body and learns that Julie did not drop her acquaintance with George. As Robin and her friends respond to the clues, they realize that Kathy, Julie and George's family are all involved in a dangerous plot. Tripping down memory lane, the adult Robin discovers in this bittersweet but lively romp, can be as lethal as being a social pariah was in her teens. Author tour. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Despite protestations to the contrary, Manhattan news-network producer Robin Hudson (last seen in Nice Girls Finish Last, LJ 1/96) crams more living into one day than any of her friends ever could. When Karen, her young co-worker, fails to show for a Halloween girls' night out, Robin begins a kind of costumed scavenger hunt that leads from one personalized clue to the next. The clues-part of an elaborate charade staged by her one-time childhood best friend and fellow "cootie girl"-ultimately lead her to the scene of a murder. Anyone who knows Robin knows her investigations are unique, marked by wicked humor, endless spontaneity, crazy plot, nonstop gabfest, vivid action, and her unruly hair. A wonderful diversion.

Kirkus Reviews

The knockabout title, a throwback to Sharyn McCrumb's salad days, is the best thing about All News Network producer Robin Hudson's third adventure, a Girls' Night Out gone mad. Back in the Big Apple for Halloween, Robin heads out for an evening of barhopping, dress-up, backchat, and female bonding with her old buddies Tamayo, the clown producer; Claire, the got-it-all anchor; Sally, the bald witch; and Kathy, Robin's dewy-eyed new intern. When Kathy doesn't show up at their rendezvous but instead phones on the cellular to say that she's hiding in some guy's closet, Robin smells a rat—but she can't imagine how her pinball odyssey among Manhattan's nightspots will send her back to memories of (1) her high-school days in Ferrous, Minnesota, when she and Julie Goomey, dubbed the cootie girls by class style-setters Mary MacCosham and Sis Fanning, fought back to semipopularity; and (2) her first weeks in New York, when she fell in love with the city while unwittingly getting involved in a mob hit gone wrong. The zany cast provides scattered laughs, but trying to follow the plot is about as worthwhile as watching the heavens for Skylab detritus.

Not even Hayter (Nice Girls Finish Last, 1996, etc.) can pull off this mishmash of Bergson, Proust, and Leona Helmsley's New York. It's like listening to somebody else's dreams.

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