Serious as a Heart Attack
Louisa Luna
Atria, May 2004, $23.00, 256 pp.
ISBN: 0743466608

On the train to work in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Dodger runs into Hummer Fish from high school. They discuss how friends and relatives are doing like her dead grandfather of three decades. Finally Queenie informs Hummer that she will be fired from her proofing job at a calendar making company for missing that the start of daylight savings was placed on the wrong Sunday. Hummer hires Queenie to find his girlfriend, stripper Trigger Happy.

Queenie locates Trigger in her apartment, but wonders if she can collect a fee since the stripper is dead. NYPD Detective Olds suspects Queenie killed Trigger. Though she sasses the cops at every moment, someone stalks her while she makes the rounds (food and drink that is, not amateur sleuthing) of the two boroughs. On her trek to not smoke, not stay up all night, and not get laid, she meets a private detective who appreciates a woman with a New York mouth and willing to prove her innocence though Queenie knows not getting laid seems impossible.

This offbeat crime thriller is a delightful satirical slice of New York starring a tough-ass female who uses profanity as a greeting and symbolically rides the F-train. The story line never takes itself seriously as Queenie prefers bar hopping in Coney Island, but knows she must find the killer before either Olds arrests her or the culprit gives her a permanent home in the ground where she will stay out late forever. Louisa Luna provides a fun wild New York joy ride starring a BRAVE NEW GIRL.

Harriet Klausner