The Adventures of Isabel: An Epitome Apartments Mystery

Book one in a mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective is ambisexual V.I. Warshawski meets Kinky Friedman's Village Irregulars 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.