The Adventures of Isabel

The first book in the Epitome Apartments series, a playful and trope-bending mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective. What happens when Raymond Chandler and Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show collaborate to write a cozy mystery and the heroine is an LGBTQ private detective with a razor-sharp wit, an open heart, an unforgettable gang of quirky friends, and a cat. Rescued from torpor and poverty by the need to help a good friend deal with the murder of her beloved granddaughter, our downsized-social-worker protagonist and her cat, Bunnywit, are jolted into a harsh, street-wise world of sex, lies, and betrayal, to which they respond with irony, wit, intelligence (except for the cat), and tenacity. With judicious use of the Oxford comma, pop culture trivia, common mystery tropes, and a keen eye for deceit, our protagonist swaggers through the mean streets of -- yes, a Canadian city! -- and discovers that what seems at first to be just a grotty little street killing is actually the surface of a grandiose and glittering set of criminal schemes. "Fans of unconventional mysteries will be richly rewarded." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review. “(A) relentlessly clever read.” - Kirkus Reviews.