Book Genre: FUNNY MYSTERY // FUNNY FICTION
Publisher: LAUGH RIOT PRESS
Release Date: AUGUST 2014
Book Description:
MCCALL & COMPANY: WORKMAN’S COMPLICATION
WAY-OFF BROADWAY ACTRESS. MURDERED PI FATHER. NEW DAY JOB.
Off-off-off-off Broadway actress Kate McCall inherits her father’s New York private investigation business after he’s a whole lot of murdered in a life insurance company elevator.
A concrete-carrying, ballroom-dancing construction mule says he fell off the scaffolding and can never work—or dance—again, and then sues the contractor for a whole lot of money.
Kate assembles the eccentric tenants of her brownstone and her histrionic acting troupe to help her crack the cases, and they stir up a whole lot of trouble.
But not as much trouble as Kate, who sticks her nose in the middle of the multi-million-dollar life-insurance scam her father was investigating and gets a whole lot of arrested for murdering a medical examiner.
Will Kate bust the insurance scam, prove who really killed the examiner—and her father—and get out of jail in time to pull off the ballroom sting of the decade? She might, but it's going to be a whole lot of hilarious.
MCCALL & COMPANY: SWOLLEN IDENTITY
BEAUTIFUL BILLIONAIRE SOCIALITE. COLD-BLOODED CORPORATE ASSASSIN. MCCALL & COMPANY BACK IN BUSINESS.
Way-off Broadway actress and NYC PI Kate McCall had promised the police and the Assistant DA—her son—that she was all done investigating any damn thing in New York...
Meaning beautiful billionaire socialite Brooke Barrington says someone has stolen her identity and the corporate assassin who murdered Kate’s father has shot the eyes out of the CEO of Superior Press...
Meaning McCall & Company is back in business...
Meaning Kate enlists the help of the eccentric tenants of her brownstone—the House of Emotional Tics—and her melodramatic acting troupe, the Schmidt and Parker Players...
Meaning things spiral hilariously and dangerously out of control...
Meaning she is confronted by Brooke's demonic identical twin, Bailey, accosted by international counterfeiters, and arrested for impersonating a hooker.
Will Kate stop Bailey from murdering Brooke? Or will she stop Brooke from murdering Bailey? Or will she figure out how to tell one from the other in time to survive the wrath of the Bulgarian mob men hired to protect the counterfeit cash?
And will she finally find her father’s killer?
She might, but it's going to be a fast, funny, furious ride.
JUGGLER, PORN STAR, MONKEY WRENCH
My name is Mark Manilow. I am a Hollywood screenwriter. Here’s my recipe for a cocktail called “Romantic Hollywood Sex Comedy.”
Start with my estranged wife, who left me two years ago to become a juggler.
Pour in the ensuing emotional tailspin conjoined with a brutal case of writer’s block.
Mix with my last-gasp writing job, a ridiculous porn flick called Broken Boner.
Add in the Broken Boner porn star, who seduces me into an ill-fated relationship.
Blend with the gun-toting producer and eccentric Montecito billionaire, who hire me to adapt the phonebook into a movie.
Toss in the return of my headaches and a trip to an ancient Chinese healer, where I meet the healer’s beguiling granddaughter—my monkey wrench.
Serve with wonderment as to whether or not I’ll find a way to settle things with the juggler, break it off with the porn star, and fall in love with the monkey wrench...or if anyone will stop laughing long enough to notice.
Excerpt:
MCCALL & COMPANY: WORKMAN’S COMPLICATION
“Your father’s dead, Miss McCall. Got himself murdered.”
I thought I might hear that sentence one day, but I was even less ready for it than I imagined I would be. I blinked a few times, then walked to one of the toilets, sat down, and gestured at his cigarettes. “I’ll take one of those now.” Some bad news is simply too big to process right away.
He gave me a Camel, lit it, and moved back to the sink. “I work for Mel Shavelson, your father’s attorney. I’m the bearer of bad news. That’s my job.”
He talked about how my father got himself murdered—something about sticking his nose someplace it had no business being, something else about the police finding him late last night (actually, at three o’clock on Friday morning) tied to a chair in an elevator in an office building, two big fat bullet holes where his eyes used to be—but I wasn’t listening.
Instead, I was thinking about the final curtain of the last performance of Bye Bye Birdie. My father had given me flowers, handing them to me on the stage while the audience applauded. They were roses from a Korean market and smelled like ginger.
“Shavelson’s going to read the will, and you’re supposed to be there,” Barnes said. He put his cigarette out in the sink, tossed the butt in the trash, and crossed to the toilet, where I sat watching the Camel burn down to my fingers. (I don’t smoke). He handed me Mel Shavelson’s business card and said, “Date and time’s on the back. Monday morning, ten thirty.”
I took the card, still smelling the ginger roses, grief growing inside me, building, building, getting ready to bust through the wall of shock that had been constructed in the same second the fire hydrant had delivered the bad news, which, as he said, was his job.
“I knew your old man,” Barnes said. “He was a hell of a PI.” And then he left.
There had been a voicemail for me from a Detective Harriman earlier in the day, but it was just a general “Please call me as soon as possible” sort of message. I had been busy, and usually the police only contacted me to verify something or other about Jimmy getting into trouble on the job. Jimmy always worked that kind of thing out for himself and had told me, “Never cozy up to the cops unless you’re impersonating one.” I deleted Harriman’s message and didn’t call him back. Maybe that’s what he was going to tell me, that Jimmy had been murdered. Anyway, now Barnes had told me.
I dropped the Camel in the toilet, looked at the card, and wept like a seventh-grade girl.
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