Jane Goes Batty

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“Not again.”

Jane Fairfax gripped the steering wheel so tightly her hands hurt. Two dozen women stood on the sidewalk. Three of them were peering in Jane’s living room windows. All of them were dressed in imitation Regency period dresses. The thought occurred to Jane that instead of adopting the clothing of her time, they might have chosen to copy the tradition of waiting for an invitation before dropping in unannounced.

A tall, thin woman in a ghastly pink pantsuit emerged from a parked tour bus and called out loudly, “Miss Fairfax doesn’t appear to be at home today, but we can still get a lovely photo!”

“It’s Beverly!” said a deep male voice beside Jane with lascivious glee. “We should say hello.”

“We should not,” said Jane, giving Byron a withering look.

Jane had seen the woman—and her pantsuit—before. Her name was Beverly Shrop. A retired kindergarten teacher, Beverly had devoted the past five years to becoming the number-one-ranked reviewer of romance novels on a very popular bookselling site. That her “reviews” consisted largely of regurgitating a book’s cover copy mattered little to her readers. Nor did it apparently occur to them that in order for Beverly to have amassed 12,729 reviews she would have had to have read an average of 6.9 books a day.

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