The Wrong Girl

By Donis Casey

From critically acclaimed author Donis Casey comes the first in a vintage Hollywood mystery series! When a string of baffling clues leads to 1920s film star Bianca LaBelle, it looks like her dark secrets have finally come back to haunt her. Because the only thing worth more than wealth and fame is revenge…

Blanche Tucker longs to escape her drop-dead dull life in tiny Boynton, Oklahoma. Then a suave film producer roars into town. Graham Peyton is Blanche's ticket out of town—he can offer her a life of stardom in Beverly Hills. But the sleezy producer's offer is too good to be true, and once they get to California Blanche finds herself sold to a dangerous man. But she's determined to make a new life for herself, whatever the cost…

Six years later, Blanche has transformed into Bianca LaBelle, the reclusive and beloved film star. But when a private detective visits Bianca's mansion to ask her about remains found on a Santa Monica beach, it seems her shiny new life is going up in smoke. Peyton was murdered, and as this movie star mystery heats up, suspicion falls on the enigmatic Bianca. Did she make him pay for her private wrongs? With all of the twists and turns of a 1920s film, The Wrong Girl follows the daring exploits of a girl who chases her dream from the farm to old Hollywood, while showing just how risky—and rewarding—it can be to go off script.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Nov 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781492699217

Donis Casey

Donis Casey is an award-winning author whose first novel The Old Buzzard Had It Coming was named an Oklahoma Centennial Book in 2008. She has twice won the Arizona Book Award and has been a finalist for the Willa Award. A former teacher, academic librarian, and entrepreneur, she currently resides in Tempe, Arizona.

Reviews for The Wrong Girl

[cathyskye · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Long-time fans of Donis Casey's Alafair Tucker series about a crime-solving farm woman in 1910s Oklahoma just might remember Alafair's daughter Blanche from The Wrong Hill to Die On when Blanche was sent to Arizona to recuperate from a respiratory ailment. Of all Alafair's children, Blanche was the prettiest and the most dissatisfied with life on the farm. As far as Blanche was concerned, Boynton was just a flyspeck on the map and not worthy of notice, so she's the perfect Tucker rebel to start a new series.Yes, Alafair and other family members are mentioned in The Wrong Girl-- and some of those "mentions" made me laugh-- but this is Blanche's show, and she turns out to be one very fine actress. The main thing I liked about her was that she admitted when she did stupid things and used her intelligence and what she learned at her mother's knee to get past the bad bits and persevere to get what she wanted.The Wrong Girl is a departure for Casey. We move from Oklahoma slang to 1920s Hollywood slang. The outlook is fresh and spirited. Blanche is showing readers how fast the country was changing during the '20s. The chapter headings are the dialogue cards used during old silent movies, and I have to admit that the fast pace and all the action made me think I'd walked into an episode of The Perils of Pauline. Yes, I really enjoyed The Wrong Girl. It's amazing how different a book can be from its predecessors and yet be so reminiscent of them. Blanche has chosen a completely different life from the rest of her family-- a life many of them would probably frown upon-- but she is a Tucker, and you can see this from first page to last. I'm looking forward to her next adventure with a great deal of anticipation.

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting tale of a young girl in Oklahoma Territory in the early 1920s who is flim flammed, avoids the brothel she is sold to in Arizona, and mysteriously rises to stardom with a new name in the new world known as Hollywood motion pictures. Then six years later a man is murdered and turns out to be her flimflam man. Enter the sleuth. It is an enjoyable read.I requested and received a free ebook copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley.