Epitome Apartments Mystery

Book one in a mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective is ambisexual Kinsey Millhone meets Canadian Lisbeth Salander 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. A mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective who is rescued from her creditors when a long-time friend hires her to investigate the death of her granddaughter. And what seems to be just another grotty street killing is the surface manifestation of a grandiose set of criminal schemes. Candas Jane Dorsey is the award-winning author of Black Wine, A Paradigm of Earth, Machine Sex and Other Stories, Vanilla and Other Stories, and Ice and Other Stories. She is a writer, editor, former publisher, community advocate, and activist living in Edmonton, Alberta. "Look, kiddo," said Denis finally, "you need a job. Hep needs someone who can ask hard questions to people without offending them. Nothing like a registered social worker to do that on an hourly basis. Hep has the money for the hourly basis." "When did you two talk this over and decide I was the next Nancy Drew?" "Before I called you," Denis said, enough less drunk than we were to still be shamefaced. (We, more simply, were just shitfaced.) "Why the fuck didn't you tell me this then? I'd have stayed home with Bunnywit and eaten flies. Forget it. I've got my new career all mapped out. AAAAAlthea. Poetic but lusty. By the minute, hour or week. Anything you want. How's that sound?" "It sounds stupid. These days you gotta have a dungeon and six thousand dollars' worth of video equipment just to turn a trick. And besides, Althea? Really. Why don't you just use your own . . . shit, no way you're distracting me. You need a source of income, if only to pay me back the big bucks you owe me. Not that I'd be crass enough to mention that as a way of trying to influence you." Hep then named an hourly rate which made even my over-inflatedly self-indulgent subconscious blink, and between the emotional blackmail of being reminded how much I owed Denis, the memory of my empty cupboard, evocations of the pitiful dead kid, and greed, I was persuaded - provisionally, with confirmation to be given once I sobered up - to give up my career as a hooker and become a detective.

A wise-cracking, grammar-obsessed, pansexual amateur sleuth is thrust into the world of the uber-rich when her enigmatic, now-famous childhood friend breezes back into her life begging for help with a dangerous stalker Our nameless postmodern amateur sleuth is still recovering from her first dangerous foray into detective work when her old friend Priscilla Jane Gill breezes back into her life and begs for help. Pris, now a famous travel writer, fears she's being stalked again, after a nearly, fatal attack by a deranged fan a year earlier. In Pris's dizzying world of wealth and privilege, nameless meets dreamy but sinister tech billionaire Nathan and his equally unnerving sidekick Chiles. Pris's stalker is, murdered outside her book launch, and the shadow of obsession continues to stalk Pris. With no one she can totally trust, nameless knows she's not going to like the answer, but she delves into her old friend's past, seeking the mastermind behind Pris's troubles before it's too late. Bunnywit does his level best to warn them, but no one else speaks Cat, so background peril transforms into foreground betrayal and murder. In the second installation of the Epitome Apartments Mystery Series, our heroine walks a dangerous path in a world, where money is no object and the stakes are higher, and more personal, than ever. When her beautiful and enigmatic childhood friend Pris breezes back into her life after several decades with stories of a violent assault, our wily amateur sleuth protagonist can't help but become involved. She is thrust into the world of the uber-rich, determined to find the man, who has been, stalking her now-famous friend.

The witty, queer accidental detective of the Epitome Apartments is back. While helping to solve a community murder, she also needs to convince police that she didn't revenge-kill the man who took everything from her The nameless amateur sleuth of The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? has often said that death is too good for Lockwood Chiles - who is in prison for killing her beloved partner, Nathan, and her close friend Pris - and makes no secret that she hates the man who massacred her shot at happiness. So when Chiles ends up dead in his cell, it's no wonder she becomes a prime suspect. Meanwhile, an aggressive band of men in military-adjacent garb turn a string of assaults against nameless's unhoused neighbors into full-bore murder right behind the Epitome Apartments, and she rashly promises to help bring them to law. As if that's not enough, unscrupulous parties are scheming to strip her of her inheritance, money she and Nathan had intended would address the city's lack of harm-reduction services and low-income housing. Now it is nameless's mission to clear her name and to hold her tattered community together, all while she's coming apart herself. Our wily amateur sleuth is suspected of murder. When one of her unhoused neighbors is kicked to death she becomes involved in a second investigation as well. Our detective is surrounded by the voices of the dead - but can any of them answer the urgent questions of the living? Candas Jane Dorsey is the award-winning author of Black Wine, A Paradigm of Earth, Machine Sex and Other Stories, Vanilla and Other Stories, Ice and Other Stories, and in the Epitome Apartments mystery series, The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? She is a writer, editor, former publisher, community advocate, and activist living in Edmonton, Alberta. On the top shelf of my bedroom closet, I have a box that sings to me. When I say this, when I say that I have a box in my closet that sings to me (or, more properly, that I have, in my closet, a box that sings to me), I do not mean a music box, an automaton, a Victrola, a phonograph, a record player, a stereo, a Discman, a Walkman, a television, a computer, an .mp3 player, a Smartphone with Bluetooth, a smart thermostat: I do not mean anything fantastical or even science-fictional except in the sense of that 2003 William Gibson quote in the Economist.1 The box is rectangular and deeper than it is wide, and it was carved by a lover, with love, to fit the shape of my hands, and in it is a sheaf of a technological marvel called smart paper that records in many ways - moving and still visuals, voices, text. On that paper are the voices, work, and images of Nathan Bierce, who was the dearest love of all my dear loves so far, and the voices, notes, and a few images of Priscilla Jane Gill, who was a rediscovered college friend - and also, on some, there is the voice, work, and face of their killer, Lockwood Chiles, my worst enemy. I am haunted by the voices of these dead. I've already told the story of how I got the box, the paper, and a heartful of grief.2 It's also the story of why on my bookshelf I have a very creepy dead-and-taxidermied cat yclept Micah the First, and why twining around my feet as this story begins were not one but two very non-ghostly, very living cats: my old tortoiseshell-and-white calico Manx buddy Bunnywit and Micah Five, an elegant Abyssinian with a secret past. Not-so-secret, actually, in these days of global media, but all three of us have long since had our fifteen minutes of fame. Our story is so last year. Or so I thought. Ha. 1. "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003 2. What's the Matter with Mary Jane, the second of the books I've written about my adventures, the first being The Adventures of