Faye Quick Series

I’d had two murders since last spring, solved them both. The first one was prime and it got a lotta attention in the fish wrappers, so I had a bunch of clients for awhile. Just cause people saw my name in the paper they figured I was the best (which I might be). Not bad for a twenty-six-year-old gal from Newark, New Jersey.

It’s the middle of World War II, but not all the killing is happening overseas. In a sweltering New York City summer, scrappy steno-turned-sleuth Faye Quick–kicked upstairs when her boss ships out–takes on a new case that would make even the most experienced P.I. sweat bullets.

It all starts with a beautiful woman. Heartbroken Claire Turner turns on the waterworks in Faye’s office, begging for help in finding her beau, Private Charlie Ladd, gone missing while on leave from Uncle Sam’s army. But when Faye busts into Charlie’s hotel room, she doesn’t find anyone–anyone alive, that is.

But where’s Charlie? Because the corpse in the hotel room might not be him. And that leads Faye to wonder if the unfortunate stiff was Charlie’s target practice.

In a case with more twists, starts, and stops than the Third Avenue El, Faye learns that some shocking truths are hidden behind the fog of war–a personal war being fought on the home front.

Brimming over with big band music, hairdos in snoods, and unfiltered smokes–the same irresistible 1940s detail that made This Dame for Hire such a treat–the second adventure of indefatigable Faye solidifies her status as one of Sandra Scoppettone’s most appealing characters. Too Darn Hot is sizzling fun readers are sure to make Quick work of.

"I didn’t start out to be a private eye. I thought I was gonna be a secretary–get my boss his java in the morning, take letters, and so on. Hell, I didn’t get my degree in steno to put my life on the line. It was true I wanted an interesting job, but that I’d end up a PI myself . . . it never entered my mind."

New York, 1943. Almost anything in pants has gone to serve Uncle Sam in the war–including Woody Mason, the head of a detective agency in midtown Manhattan. Left to run the show is his secretary, Faye Quick, who signed on to be a steno, not a shamus. At twenty-six and five foot four, there’s not much to Faye, but she’s got moxie–which she’ll need when she stumbles over a dead girl in the street and takes on her first murder case.

This victim wasn’t any ordinary girl. Claudette West was a student at NYU and the daughter of a Park Avenue family. Faye, who lives in bohemian Greenwich Village–where no one cares how you look–ventures uptown, where people care enough about money to kill for it. Claudette’s father is convinced greed was the motive, and that Claudette’s working-class boyfriend, Richard Cotten, killed the girl because she threw him off the gravy train.

Faye, however, isn’t so sure, not when she learns about all the other men Claudette was secretly seeing–from her lecherous literature professor to an apparent con artist. For Faye, there are more shocking surprises in store than turns and dips in the Coney Island Cyclone.

Going after the bad guys and fighting a good fight on the home front, Faye is as scrappy and endearing as any character Sandra Scoppettone has ever created, and This Dame for Hire’s period setting is rendered so real you can hear the big band music, see the nylons and fedoras, and feel the rumble of the Third Avenue El. When it comes to an irresistible detective and a riveting new series, you must remember this: Here’s looking at Faye Quick.