Further Lane: A Novel

by James Brady

Whether she's climbing Mt. Everest or making the perfect gingerbread house, lifestyle guru Hannah Cutting, dubbed "America's Homemaker," does everything with style. She even, it seems, has died with style-washed ashore naked near her East Hampton mansion with the take of a privet hedge driven through her heart. Though adored and emulated by millions, Hannah was the most despised woman in town.

Dispatched to get the story for Parade magazine, journalist Beecher Stow returns to his family home on Further Lane to dissect Cutting's past. Competing for the story is beautiful British book editor Lady Alix Dunraven, feverishly searching for the tell-all manuscript Cutting was writing before she was killed. Soon the two team up to investigate this catty crime in a fabulously entertaining romp through the Hamptons, replete with status battles, run-ins with the rich and famous-including Calvin Klein, Demi Moore and Barbara Streisand-and pretensions as high as the Hampton dunes...

Genres: Fiction, Mystery

312 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

James Winston Brady was an American celebrity columnist who created the Page Six gossip column in the New York Post and authored the In Step With column in Parade for nearly 25 years until his death. He also authored numerous books about his time serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War.

Brady was born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His career in journalism started working as a copy boy for the Daily News, where he worked while attending Manhattan College. He graduated in 1950. He left the paper to serve in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War.During the war, he was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines first leading a rifle platoon and later acting as an executive officer of a rifle company at one point serving under John Chafee. The majority of his service took place in the North Korean Taebaek Mountains during the fall and bitterly cold winter of 1951 and 1952. Brady was awarded the Bronze Star with the Combat V (recognizing an award resulting from combat heroism) in November 2001 for his actions on May 31, 1952 in a firefight with Chinese forces near Panmunjom.

Brady died at age 80 on January 26, 2009 at his home in Manhattan.

James Brady is the father of Susan Konig.

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is good if you want every page stuffed full of name dropping. A dead woman washes ashore at the Hamptons, a classy beach neighbourhood on Long Island. A news reporter who is settled down for the summer to write a book, decides to go around interviewing everyone, especially when it comes out that the deceased was writing a tell-all book. The murder case itself is quite thin. You can't go more than a paragraph without names like Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Prince Charles, Marilyn Monroe, etc. and clubs, brands and firms. They aren't all in the story, few or none of them would have speaking parts, but we have to be told they are there. It's padding. Decoration. Atmosphere.
A massive storm blows in, and in the aftermath, the narrator and his girlfriend go out to see if they can help anyone. Paul Simon, Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin, Yoko Ono and Billy Joel are going to play in a relief concert. You will be pleased to hear.

[Denise · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the most name-droppingest book, but it does have some good parts, IF you can slog through all the name-dropping.

[Cynthia Kauffmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just okay.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different from my usual. I grabbed this at the library on a "free" shelf. I enjoyed it. It was quirky. He put lots of real celebs in it as showing up at parties, etc, which was fun.

[Stefanie Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

""

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having stumbled into this book through the back door of having read James Brady's "A Hamptons Christmas" just prior to this, I was in no way anticipating opening the covers of a murder mystery. (Not that I'm a stranger to the genre, but I have found myself reading a greater proportion of them this past year than in the whole of the previous five years. It seems to have become an unintended trend.)

As in “A Hamptons Christmas,” this novel carries the same sense of the Hamptons as a community. The social grappling between the new money and the old money acts as a counterpoint to the friction fraying away at the relations between the locals and the celebrity move-ins.

I was especially pleased to witness the introduction of the two main characters to each other and the building of their relationship. Although I had been introduced to the pair through the later book, I found the social jockeying as they compete for the same prize was quite enjoyable.

Wit and satire abound in this story that provides a pleasant diversion from , well.... from life outside of the book.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This time "Beecher Stowe" must return to the Hamptons to get the story (for Parade magazine) on the murder of Hannah Cutting, a Martha Stewart type, who was killed by a stake of privet hedge through the heart. If you've ever driven by the colossal East Hampton estates and have seen the huge hedges that make gawking at the rich and famous almost impossible, you'd realize that a privet hedge stake is quite an adequate killing tool. As I mentioned in my "The House that ate the Hamptons" review, this again is a silly, fun, summer/beach 'murder mystery', and thus I gave it three stars.

[Jini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. I read it a while ago and for the life of me I can't remember much about it. I think I liked it so much because it takes place where I grew up and I know every place Brady mentions in his story. Plus, he was a customer of my Grandmother's grocery store.

[Lois Hecksel · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Brady combines fictional characters with actual celebs which at times became confusing and/or detracted from the plot. He also spends much time describing the "inner workings" of the Hamptons; interesting for someone "in the know", detracting from the plot.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bad book.

[Candice]

Very interesting and intriguing story of who done it...