The Big Killing

Smith & Wetzon #1

by Annette Meyers

Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon are the best executive search consultants on Wall Street. Wetzon, the more trusting, naive partner, meets very edgy client Barry Stark for drinks at the Four Seasons--where she later finds him stabbed to death in a phone booth, herself stuck with his briefcase, and soon hopelessly attracted to homicide cop Silvestri, who seems smitten by man-trap Smith. Can the headhunters hunt down a killer?

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, 20th Century

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Annette Meyers spent sixteen years on Wall Street as an executive search consultant, and is currently an arbitrator with the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). She is a past president of Sisters in Crime and is secretary of the International Association of Crime Writers.

With her husband Martin Meyers, using the pseudonym Maan Meyers, she writes historical mysteries set in New York in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries.

--from her website

Series:
* Smith and Wetzon Mystery
* Olivia Brown Mystery

Reviews

[Irena Politzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I read this while recovering from a nasty bout of the stomach flu, so maybe that colored my opinion. But overall I found it mildly entertaining and no more. It's set in the late '80s, so they're still talking about traders using typewriters and quote machines, which is kinda amusing. But the book didn't really age too well -- feels outdated and musty. The characters don't really grab you that much, even though I liked the glimpse inside the world of Wall Street headhunters. I may read some of the others in the series, but only because my sister's father-in-law owns them. Definitely not a must-read.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me forever to get into this book. The first part was very boring and I almost quit reading it. It finally got interesting enough to hook me so I had to find out how it ended. I decided to read this book because I have the 4th book in this series so I looked up the first book. Now I don´t want to read anymore. This series is about a duo of headhunters called Smith and Wetzon but Smith is a very unlikable, shallow, cardboard character. Wetzon isn´t very smart and some things seemed obvious but she was clueless. There were a lot of names thrown around throughout the book, clients or people Wetzon knew, and it was impossible to keep track of them all.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The setting is New York City, the detectives a headhunting pair named (Xenia) Smith and (Leslie) Wetzon, though the narrative only follows Wetzon. Although I enjoyed the mystery well enough, it took me awhile to finish it, in part because the whole Wall-Street-stock-trading scene is a bit beyond me and mostly because from about halfway through the book—or less—I found I could not stomach Smith. I really didn’t like her and I couldn’t see waht Wetzon saw in her—even attempting to see it from Wetzon’s point of view. Possibly the author did not portray the irresistable charm (I’m guessing) she intend Smith to have for Wetzon.

[Paul Close · Rating 4 out of 5]

entertaining, recommended

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am totally NOT interested in Wall Street. So this book being about greedy Wall street and the headhunters that go along with it was a turn off. I skimmed through all the details about making contacts and job offers, etc. But the murder mystery part was pretty good. An unexpected conclusion, but one character that was leading us to think may be crooked or a murderer, never materialized and never explained her behavior.
I did decide to not finish this about 3/4 of the way through, but the next day I picked it up because it was a good "who done it" story and I found I wanted to find out who did it.
For the most part, it kept my interest, but I felt it didn't really follow through on some of the characters and just left you hanging.

[CLM · Rating 4 out of 5]

While working at Bantam, I came across this series about two appealing New York headhunters whose clients always seem to end up dead.