Bubbles grapples with romance, other mysteries
Bubbles Yablonski is not the brightest tube of lipstick in the display case so it’s fun to put yourself in her high heels. I imagine that whenever she sees a Vehicle Slow Lane she’s happy that President Bush’s “No Car Left Behind” initiative is sensitive to the infirmities of late model automobiles like her own. I imagine she’s crazy about the idea of Stem’s Cell Implants. As soon as she has a minute she’s going to call Stem herself and see about having her own phone implanted. Think of the time it would save when her phone rang and she had to hunt it down in the bottom of her purse. I also imagine her straightening her underwires and pulling her shoulders back every time she approaches a door that says “push.”
Inarguably, Bubbles’s brain is less elastic than her Spandex, but you have to give her some credit. After starring in five books, some of them bestsellers, including her debut novel, which won Agatha Awards’ Best First Mystery, she’s proven to have the staying power of an entire can of ultra-hold hairspray.
Sarah Strohmeyer of Middlesex invented Bubbles three years ago out of thongs, blue hair, and her own childhood in the dying industrial city of Bethlehem, Pa. Strohmeyer has been prolific, and her protagonist has been growing alongside her own body of work. Originally a hapless but unsinkable beautician privy to all of Lehigh’s gossip while her clients perused copies of People under the hairdryer, she has slogged through eight years of schooling at Two Guys Community College and is ready as a still hapless cub reporter to start trimming people down to size with a pen rather than a pair of scissors.