Tori Carrington, Dirty Laundry

Dirty Laundry

Tori Carrington

Forge, May 2006, $23.95, 320 pp.

ISBN 0765312417

Sophie Metropolis is a private investigator in training under the mentorship of her Uncle Spyros who owns his own agency. When she is not drinking frappes she is avoiding her mother, who wants to hire her to find out who her husband is having an affair with; the wannabe PI doesn't want to get involved in the middle of that family mess. She is working on a case in which she has to find Fred the missing ferret who belongs to a wheelchair bound heartbroken girl.

Her workload also includes trying to prove that a man who wants disability is faking an on-the-job injury. Sophie tries to serve papers on a man who is as slippery as an eel, meaning he always finds a way to wiggle out of it. Finally she seeks the missing dry cleaner store owner Uncle Tolly who has two sets of books that makes it look like he is laundering money for mafia mobster Tony Di Piazza. His thugs are following her everywhere she goes, and they break into her apartment to steal the books. Sophie is in danger, while the mysterious, sexy and dangerous Australian Jake Porter watches her back; she would prefer he held her tight in bed.

Readers who like well written humorous tales with an eccentric support cast will want to read DIRTY LAUNDRY. The heroine is a modern woman who is close to her old world Greek family, allowing readers to visualize a Queens Greek-American neighborhood. Sophie's dog with his extreme case of flatulence will have readers laughing out loud as she tries to cure his condition so her apartment can smell clean in case Porter joins her.