Three Martini Lunch by Suzanne Rindell

Suzanne Rindell is a doctoral student in American modernist literature at Rice University. Her first novel, THE OTHER TYPIST, published in 2013, has been optioned for film by Fox Searchlight Pictures (produced by and starring Keira Knightly).  THE OTHER TYPIST is a delicious story of Rose Baker, a 1920s police stenographer who records confessions, and Odelie, a new typist in the pool who becomes Rose’s object of fascination.  Full of intrigue, it is a great read and an excellent debut novel.  Rindell, who worked in New York at a literary agency, describes THE OTHER TYPIST as the kind of book she hoped to find in the slush pile.

THREE MARTINI LUNCH is both the novel you hope a literary agency “reader”  will find in the slush pile and a story about the slush pile itself.  A clever combination of three interwoven characters that feels like a book version of Mad Men, this 500 page plus story of the 1950s publishing world in New York is fascinating.  The stories of Cliff, son of a successful book editor and himself an aspiring writer, Eden, who dreams of becoming an editor but faces challenges as a Jewish woman, and Miles, a talented writer from Harlem trying to tell the story of his father, come together to give a vibrant picture of an industry and an era.  Ambition and competition square off against issues of race, gender, sexual orientation.  Friendship and betrayal…plot twists…well worth the read!