For the longest time, I couldn't review this book and wasn't able to figure out why. Then it dawned on me- I was jealous of Velda! 'I' wanted her adventures; 'I' wanted to look like her;'I' wanted to have someone write about me like they wrote about her!! This is how real Ron Miller's craftsmanship has made her. She is so vivid, humourous, interesting that I felt deliciously disturbed, and unnerved, and threatened--by a character in a book! :)

Quite a feat, Ron Miller--your Velda is truly a rare kind of woman, one to contend with, envy and never forget!

Maggie Pagratis

First off, I should write that despite what you might think from looking at the cover, Velda is not an R-rated read. Quite the opposite; she is fun for adolescents as well as adults.

Second, I should say that I have never read anything quite like this book. The stories are entertaining and humorous. The most surprising aspect of the style is that the author seems to frequently lose interest in the mystery itself. This is a little disconcerting at first, but after the first time it happens I found I enjoyed it. These stories are lots of fun.

Finally, I found that the short story, which I have avoided my entire adult life, now attracts me. You can get a satisfying reading experience at the end of a long day in a small digestible bite. Maybe its old age, but I like that aspect of the Velda stories.

I highly recommend this book.

Velda - there's a name to conjure with. Mike Hammer's secretary ... and is that all she was?

Well, Miller takes the name and runs with it. This 'Velda' is now a gumshoe who has earned her spurs. Once she was a showgirl, now she has her ticket and is an investigator. Private dick. Which has her former colleagues in the strip joint in peals of laughter ...

Velda is called in by her former boss because a girl has been found dead. Monica. Young and beautiful. Found dead in her dressing room, and who dunnit?

Velda asks around and by the end of the story - the first in this collection - she has her man. Well, it's not as straightforward as that ... the murderer is a little more difficult to pin down.

What this first story in the book has in spades is Velda - her voice, her attitude, her experience. The way she looks at the world is captured in her voice, and by that I mean the author's mimicking of her voice. A former colleague of her father's, a cop, says:

“You ought to stop by the old precinct more often. You’ve really grown up.”
“Beats shrinking,” I said.

Miller has really got inside Velda. We're somewhere in the fifties, there are showgirls, tough cops, seedy joints ... and Velda, who has seen it all and has an attitude towards it that's fun and laid back and incredibly entertaining to read.

Miller has created a character who you want to know more about, who you want to follow into tricky situations just to find out how she deals with them, whose judgement of character you trust and whose every word holds the promise of entertainment.

If all the stories are as good as this first one, why isn't Miller climbing up the best-seller charts and pushing Dan Brown or Patricia Cornwell out of the lists and into the obscurity they deserve? Because neither one of them has created a character that you remember as vividly as you remember Velda, the girl who has everything a man wants, but wants more for herself.

Check it out now or be the poorer for it.

Keith Dixon