Jenn's Review: Don't Look Down

Summary: Lucy Armstrong is a director of television commercials who's just been recruited to finish a four-day action movie shoot. But she arrives on the set to discover that the directing staff has quit, the make-up artist is suicidal, the stars are egomaniacs, the stunt director is her ex-husband, and the lead actor has just acquired as an advisor a Green Beret who has the aggravating habit of always being right.

Green Beret Captain JT Wilder had thought that hiring on as a military consultant for a movie star was a good deal: easy money and easier starlets. Instead he has to babysit a bumbling comedian, dodge low-flying helicopters, and resist his attraction to a director who bears a distracting resemblance to Wonder Woman. Then the CIA calls and he realizes that somebody is taking “shooting a movie” much too literally.

Review: I wanted to read this book because I stumbled across the second collaboration of Crusie & Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman, and loved it. This is most certainly their first co-authored work as it does not have the fluidity of the second. Whereas I found their writing styles meshed well in Agnes, I was far more aware of the switching of voices here.


The novel opens and you feel like you've been dropped in the middle of a chapter. I'm a fan of NOT reading the jacket blurb before starting the book ~sometimes I'll read the blurb before purchasing a new author, but I prefer to let the author's story unfold on it's own with no preconceptions~ but it's hard to do that with this book. It takes a good few pages to get ones bearings (With Agnes the title pretty much gave you the need-to-know plot exposition). I also didn't find these characters as likable as those in their second book nor the mystery as intriguing. It felt like the formula, though contextually far fetched (a director of commercials is called in to finish up the directing a feature film?!?), was laid out a little too early thus making the whole thing a little predictable.


All in all, the read was good fun. I certainly hope that their continued collaboration matures with persistence. I don't know that I'd re-read this one, but it made me want to pick up Agnes and the Hitman again. I recommend you do the same.


3.7/5.0