Naked Brunch [Hardcover]

Like a packed subway car, this humorous and entertaining werewolf novel rattles through the bowels of an unnamed city disgorging and picking up characters as it goes. Annie, a legal secretary and the nicest person you'd ever want to meet, discovers she suffers from LMD (Lycanthropic Metamorphic Disorder), which turns her into a werewolf on full moons and gives her an uncontrollable urge to rip out the throats of deserving evil-doers, including several arms merchants and corporate power-mongers. Annie is taken in (in more ways than one) by Dr. Marco Potenza, who runs a secret facility for recovering werewolves. But she also breaks the rules and falls in love with a renegade werewolf named Jim. Meanwhile Marco's wife and father, Annie's weird friends, the mayor of the city, and a sweet simpleton of a news reporter are all converging on the night of the harvest moon.

Sparkle Hayter knows how to keep the plot galloping along like a werewolf in heat, and somehow makes the ridiculous strangely believable. Unexpected twists and turns concerning various adulterous affairs (who's "canoodling" whom?) keep it edgy and bubbling. On top of it all, Hayter, as fans of her outrageous Robin Hudson mystery series know, can be very funny. When Annie's friend Liz, a high-end caterer, mixes up two party orders, "the Orthodox Jews with drug problems got ham and cheese and shrimp salad and the gay cops got the kosher platter." --Mark Frutkin

Fans of Hayter's wild Robin Hudson mystery series (The Last Manly Man) may be surprised by Annie Engel, Manhattan legal secretary by day, werewolf by night. Unlike sleuthing hipster Robin, 20-something Annie is clueless and not half as entertaining as the supporting cast and clever plot in this witty but uneven supernatural mystery. She leads a self-declared boring life, mourning a lost romance and working for the monolithic Synergy Enterprises. Boring, that is, if you don't count her turning into a werewolf at night and committing mayhem, including the murder of a Synergy executive (her lupine nose catches a whiff of his rotten soul). Annie isn't aware of her nocturnal exploits, but the city is buzzing about the strange serial murders, and soon several people are trailing her. One of them is the comically inept Sam Deverell, an over-the-hill former TV anchor now working as a Citywide Cable News overnight reporter ("the newsroom equivalent of an ice floe"). Another is Dr. Marco Potenza, head of the underground Center for Lycanthropic Metamorphic Disorder, dedicated to helping "people living with LMD." As a psychiatrist from a long line of werewolves who've mastered the art of controlling their urges via drugs and hypnotherapy, Potenza wants to rehabilitate Annie. But his former assistant and enemy, Jim Valiente (now a "free werewolf" indulging his wild side), is determined to keep Annie far from Potenza's clutches. The madcap antics make this book a pleasure, though readers will wish that the passive Annie had a more forceful role. Hayter's writing is sharp, but she needs a stronger heroine for the book to really howl.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Hayter, author of the Robin Hudson mysteries, ventures into the world of fantasy with a comic werewolf adventure. Secretary Annie Engel feels very odd when she reads about the deaths of businessmen whose throats have been ripped apart. Could she have witnessed these deaths? She realizes she has done more than witness when Dr. Marco Potenza tracks her down and tells her that she has lycanthropic morphic disorder; in other words, she's a werewolf. But can Annie trust Marco? Jim, a handsome werewolf who has already stolen her heart, claims she can't. But then, Marco says the same about Jim. Annie is torn. Marco offers her a normal life by teaching her to suppress and possibly control her werewolf instincts, whereas Jim offers love and excitement. Hayter mixes chick lit (Annie's two best friends are shallow social climbers) and mystery (a reporter is hot on Annie's trail, though too daft to realize his wife is cheating on him) with dark fantasy for a jolly good romp. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

“It will have you howling at the moon.”
–NOW Magazine

“These werewolves are stunning.…[Naked Brunch] is bold, new, and readable.…It’s hot.”
–Rosemary Aubert, Globe and Mail

“Wacky and irreverent.”
–Elle

There’s a werewolf at large on the streets of the city – a new, rare female one. So new that in her human form Annie doesn’t even realize that at the last full moon she turned into a predatory wolf, and made her first kill – a man. But she’s been left with strange and deliriously compelling sensations of the night she can’t remember. Whatever she did, she’d like to do it again.

Police suspect a mad dog, but when the news reaches Dr. Marco Potenza, he realizes the killer was no dog, but a werewolf. He ought to know, he runs a clinic where, for a fee, werewolves, or as they prefer to be called, “people living with LMD” (Lycanthropic Metamorphic Disorder), can be sedated and confined during their monthly transformation. If he can find her, Potenza is sure that he, and he alone, can save the new werewolf from her predatory side. But Potenza is not the only man anxious to find the new member of the city pack. Jim, Potenza’s former right-hand man/wolf and now a fugitive from the clinic, is also determined to reach Annie first and keep her from Potenza’s clutches. A manic and side-splittingly funny chase for the lupine hunter is on.

Peopled with unforgettable characters, brimming with tart and funny observations on big-city and corporate life, and with a corkscrew plot that keeps the pages flying, this hilarious novel speeds along faster than a werewolf after a bad guy.

“It will have you howling at the moon.”
–NOW Magazine

“These werewolves are stunning.…[Naked Brunch] is bold, new, and readable.…It’s hot.”
–Rosemary Aubert, Globe and Mail

“Wacky and irreverent.”
–Elle

Sparkle Hayter is the author of five Robin Hudson mysteries. When she’s not travelling around the world, Hayter lives in the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

1

The wolf crouched atop the low-slung iron awning of a wholesaler in the Meatpacking District. The smell of meat was everywhere, raw, rotten, and cooking--the humid summer air threaded with smoke from the neighborhood's latest steakhouse, this one defiant enough to call itself Carnivore. It had been described by Time Out as "nouvelle caveman cuisine, slabs of meats marinated in lightly spiced nut oils, accompanied by imaginative side dishes and postmodern presentation (don't miss the Flintstone-size rack of ribs basted with jalapeno honey and beer and served with smoked apple-bacon salsa)."

The wolf was more interested in another smell, approaching from Carnivore on two legs, an odor so strong it could be tasted. It wasn't a pleasant smell. Every soul has a unique scent, and this one smelled of enthusiastic compromises with dictators, devious ambition, greed, lost children. This smell was not detectable by normal humans, but if they could have sensed it, they would have been overcome by the stench of wormy meat that had been kept in a dirty sock in the hot sun for a week or so, then set afloat in petroleum.

On the empty cobblestone street below, Robert Bingham searched for a taxi to take him back to his hotel. It had been good to be in the city for a while. His meeting at headquarters had gone well and he was rewarded with more stock options and a hearty handshake from the head of the entire organization, Lord Harry, who said, "Good job, Bob," so many times in their last meeting that it was now his nickname, Good Job Bob. When Lord Harry, who had a naming whimsy, bestowed this particular blessing on someone, that person was golden. And though Lord Harry had had to back out of their dinner at the last moment, he promised to make it up to Bob. Lord Harry always made good on his promises to the people who counted, and he was particularly pleased with the way Bob had handled overseas operations and put down the threat to the company's operations.

"I have big plans for you, Good Job Bob," he said.

Bob was speculating about what those plans were, and hoping they'd take him far from sub-Saharan Africa, when what looked like a bear leapt from the awning above him. He only had time to think, "No, it's a dog!" before his throat was in its jaws. The wolf broke his neck with one snap, ripping out his throat in the process, leaving Bob on the cobblestones in his own pooling blood.

The wolf sniffed the body as all life left it, then headed home.

2

Sam Deverell had been lucky most of his career.

Some people are just like that. They are blessed from birth with everything they need to win friends and influence people. They may be good-looking, but not too good-looking, and smart, but not too smart.

If they are too smart or too good-looking, they learn to play it down.

Sam didn't have to. He wasn't too smart, not in the way the kids in the newsroom were, and he knew it. It wasn't that he didn't try to improve himself. He had always tried to keep up on the big news stories of the day, and back when he was an anchorman he made sure he knew how to pronounce every strange foreign name perfectly. Before he did an on-set interview, he humbly consulted with his producer to find out what questions to ask, and if the producer barked a new question in his ear during the interview, he asked it without skipping a beat. Afterward, if anyone said, "Hey, great interview," or "Good show," he always said, "Yeah, tell the producer and the crew that. They did it all."

He'd watched too many too-smart guys who insisted on showing it go down to defeat, just like that guy Ichabod who made the wings of wax and feathers, flew too close to the sun, and fell into the sea. The too-smart guys, some of whom were unlucky enough to be too good-looking as well, had their way while things were going well and ratings were good. Then they got arrogant, they made demands, they pissed people off, and the whispering campaigns began. The first major fuck-up brought the glint of hidden knives. Just the glint, just enough to make the smart guy paranoid.

Performance soon suffered as viewers picked up on the arrogance and the paranoia. Ratings dropped. The guys who were too smart ended up dropping in weight class to smaller media markets, where they bitched and moaned over their copies of Atlantic Monthly and Foreign Policy Review about the injustice of a culture that rewarded mediocrity and punished brilliance.

Before he came to the city and Citywide Cable News, Sam had been the top anchor in four markets because he was likable and he read news well. He'd worked his way up the TV news ladder from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Albuquerque to Phoenix and to Atlanta, where he'd been pretty happy, co-anchoring the six p.m. newscast with his wife, Candace Quall. They were both southerners and felt at home. They had a two-million-dollar house in Buckhead, they were Atlanta A-list, and whenever they went to the mall or to a Braves baseball game people would get excited and ask for their autographs.

Sam had been lucky. He hadn't gone to college, and until he got a job at seventeen sweeping up and fetching food at the local radio station, "The Voice of Eastern Arkansas," he'd had no career aspirations. When the too-smart guy who was djing the afternoon easy-listening show quit in a principled dispute over the mandatory playlist, Sam got his chance to test his pipes, and he was on his way.

After that, it all just fell into place. Soon he took over the late-night show with an eye on that morning drive-time hour. On a clear night, a station owner from Nebraska, in Nashville for a convention, happened to pick up Sam's show from Arkansas. He found Sam to be a refreshing note in a time of antiwar protests and crazy hippies, a young man with a friendly, soothing voice who played Perry Como without any sarcasm and cheerfully took requests from the middle-aged women who tuned in, always calling them "Ma'am." The Nebraska station owner called in his own request and Sam took off for Lincoln and his own drive-time show. Soon he was anchoring on television.

Because Sam was so careful and deferred to others he rarely made a mistake on the air. He was no Ted Baxter. That's why he had always been loved, almost universally.

He was lucky in his career--and he'd be the first person to say so--until his station in Atlanta was sold to a big conglomerate and he was laid off and replaced with a younger man. His young wife, Candace, fared better. Synergy tv had courted and won her, so he followed her to the city and hit up an old friend for a job at ccn. He had hoped to be an anchor, but he didn't fit in with the network's anchor strategy, so he grudgingly accepted a job as a low-level features reporter.

When the kids at ccn looked at him, they didn't see a nice older guy who had had a bad break, they saw a guy who didn't know Icarus from Ichabod, who had his job because the owner owed him a favor--and there was a lot of speculation around the newsroom about just what that favor was for. They saw the two production assistants they could have hired for Sam's salary, or the five all-in-one audio-video cameras called Gizmos they could have bought. Or one production assistant, two cameras, and ten thousand Krispy Kreme doughnuts . . . a group of them had spent a slow news day translating Sam's value into various other commodities, like doughnuts, condoms, and Budweisers.

It wasn't just that he was so much older than almost everyone else, though they were trying to "brand" themselves as the edgy news network with a young, eclectic, and "post-ethnic" look. Sam was incompetent as a reporter; everyone knew it, even the owner. It's a temporary thing, the owner told them, Sam will be here just long enough to get on his feet here. Six months tops. Give him the easy stuff.

Six months went by, Sam had no other job offers, and he was still at ccn. Complaints about Sam escalated to the point where even the owner knew he had to go, though he didn't have the heart to fire the guy. Instead, he put Sam on the overnight shift and instructed the desk to only use him if they had to. He dropped hints about openings at easy-listening radio stations just outside the city. Eventually, he figured, Sam would take the short sword, quit on his own, and maybe go back to radio.

The overnight shift at ccn was considered a transit point for reporters on the way up or the way out. At fifty-two, almost twice as old as the other two overnight reporters, Sam's direction seemed clear. He'd been shoved onto the newsroom equivalent of an ice floe.

Sam knew this, but he didn't let on. He knew the kids in the newsroom made fun of him and wanted him gone. That made friendly old Sam turn kind of bitter, like those too-smart guys he'd outrun in the past. His wife was busy with her own career and had little time for him. Lonely, isolated, and frustrated, Sam fell into a stupid affair with a nutty young woman, which blew up in his face. His wife left him and the young woman, Micki, wouldn't even take his calls.

His luck had almost run out the night of that full moon. Then he got lucky again.

The newsroom was so quiet he could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights above, along with the soft ticka-ticka of an old-fashioned teletype news wire, kept around in case the computer system crashed. The overnight newcast was playing on a monitor near the assignment desk, where the night editor occasionally laughed at something or swore. Flies, which had invaded the newsroom with a promotional basket of gourmet fruits and meats left too long by a sunny window, buzzed around. The police scanner crackled with police talk. It was Sam's job to listen to the scanner, and he was half listening to it while shooting flies out of the air with his can of industrial-strength hairspray, when he heard the words ". . . Caucasian male, dead of neck injuries consistent with dog attack."

What a way to go, killed by man's ...