It's Bad Business: a Morg Mahoney Mystery

Publisher Marketing: Morg, prides herself on being tough. But she finds that her hard shell is vulnerable if she cares for someone too much. However, she also realizes she can't live her life as a stoic. There is a time to love. And a time to mourn. It's 1999 and Morg Mahoney has just graduated from college with a degree in Classics, which she feels qualifies her for jobs like a bank teller or a gas station cashier. When Joe Spector, a retired detective who'd been on the job with her now-deceased father that Morg calls Papa Joe, offers her a job as a private investigator, she jumps at it. Soon they become embroiled in a case that lands them smack dab in the middle of a scheme by the Mexican Mafia, La Eme. She gains a few friends and more enemies as she solves the case, while suffering a tragic loss. Fifteen years later, Morg gets an early-morning call from her filthy-rich best friend, Heather Pierce. Heather's sorority sister's fiance has disappeared on the night before their wedding. Morg drives up to Lake Tahoe to help, only to become the target of a sociopathic murderer. With a tip of the fedora to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, the story even includes a Sam Spade who helps Morg at key moments.