THE IMPERSONATOR

A friend gave me a book, saying it reminded her of my vintage mystery, LOSING DAVID. She also said that the plot goes off in another direction, but she enjoyed it. I read the blurb and it sounded so much like my story that I immediately read it.

THE IMPERSONATOR by Mary Miley did indeed have a lot of similarities to my book. An heir/heiress goes missing and is presumed dead. Years later, an actor/actress who looks remarkably like the missing person is approached to play the part. The time frame is the past, the mid-twenties/ early sixties.

But there are differences, too. Miley's actor is the heroine and mine is the hero (kind of).

And Miley writes in first person while I--though my first draft was in first person, I switched to third, then switched back to first, then back to third (rewriting every time, I might add!)--finally ended up using third person with different viewpoints. (I won't go into the reasons, but I'm happy with the result.)

My story is a stand-alone; there'll be no sequels. Miley's is the first of a mystery series.

My story has a definite romance while Miley's has a tiny bit.

Miley keeps the murderer's identity secret till the last (though most mystery readers won't be too surprised, I suspect) while I lay out the murderer's identity in the prologue.

Since Miley is writing a series, she leaves a few loose ends. Mine leaves a question, too, but not one that will lead to another story; I just didn't know the answer.

And of course, the twenties are a lot different from the sixties. Miley does a good job of evoking that era; I'm not sure how I did with the sixties but...

Anyway, I enjoyed the story. If anyone's read both LOSING DAVID and THE IMPERSONATOR, I'd love to hear your opinion. I'm really curious as to how others feel they compare

On second thoughts:  this sounds like a blatant plug so... Never mind. I won't ask you to go out and read them just to assuage my curiosity!