The Adventures of Isabel: An Epitome Apartments Mystery

by Candas Jane Dorsey

Overview

Book one in a new playful and trope-bending mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective.

“Candas Jane Dorsey’s terrific mysteries are what would happen if Raymond Chandler and Frank N. Furter collaborated on cozies and the heroine were a pansexual private detective with heart, smarts, and a T-shirt saying MASCARA IS THE NEW NOIR.” — Sarah Smith, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Vanished Child.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770415553
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Series:	An Epitome Apartments Mystery , #1
Edition description:	No Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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.

Read an Excerpt

“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 overinflatedly 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 call girl and become a detective.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/24/2020

The nameless narrator of this exceptional series launch from SF author Dorsey (Black Wine), a droll mix of mystery and metafiction set in an unnamed Canadian city, is an out-of-work social worker whose unemployment benefits ran out weeks earlier. She’s composing a classified ad to offer her sexual services when she gets a call to meet her old friend Hep Pritchard at the morgue. Hep’s granddaughter, Madeline, has been murdered. For the police, Madeline is just another dead, druggie prostitute, and pursuing her killer is unlikely to be a priority. Hep asks the narrator to investigate. As a friend remarks, “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.” From hanging out on street corners with prostitutes to attending glittering high-society charity balls with billionaire fraudsters, the always game protagonist proves herself to be a first-rate detective. Fans of unconventional mysteries will be richly rewarded. Agent: Wayne Arthurson. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

From hanging out on street corners with prostitutes to attending glittering high-society charity balls with billionaire fraudsters, the always game protagonist proves herself to be a first-rate detective. Fans of unconventional mysteries will be richly rewarded.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The Adventures of Isabel is a winner! The narrator’s voice alone is worth your time — which will be brief, because it’s a page-turner, and then when you’re done you’ll wish it had been longer. Add to that the characters, most of whom I promise you you’ve never met before, the multi-strand plot, and Bunnywit the cat, and you’ll thank me for recommending this book to you. The best part: it’s a series! There’ll be more!” — S.J. Rozan, bestselling author of Paper Son

“Candas Jane Dorsey’s terrific mysteries are what would happen if Raymond Chandler and Frank N. Furter collaborated on cozies and the heroine were a pansexual private detective with heart, smarts, and a T-shirt saying MASCARA IS THE NEW NOIR. There’s female bonding, sex (lots of it), and a cat or two. You’ll scream with laughter, you’ll checkmark phrases. And then, if you’re a nice person and love your friends, you’ll put these books in their hands and insist they read them too.” — Sarah Smith, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Vanished Child

“In The Adventures of Isabel, we see Candas Jane Dorsey obviously having as much fun writing as the reader will have reading. A little Hammett, a little Hiaasen, a little Lot 49, this is the first book in a series that demands to be read with writerly intention. Unlike Robbe-Grillet or Eco, Dorsey doesn’t want to destroy the detective novel with her postmodern take on the form. She seeks instead to shake the reader out of submission and into a clearer vision and examination of the underpinnings of the genre — the real crime and grime and meanness of the streets on which it’s set. The laughs are thrown in for free.” — Janice MacDonald, author of the Randy Craig Mystery series

“When Candas Jane Dorsey takes on a new genre, readers would do well to sit up and take notice. The Adventures of Isabel is smart and razor-sharp, with unforgettable characters and a plot that won’t let you go until the last page. You’re going to love it!”— E.C. Bell, author of the Marie Jenner Mystery Series

“A strained but relentlessly clever read.” — Kirkus Reviews

“If you’re looking to cruise with a Canadian Lisbeth Salander (think Dragon Tattoo) you may discover that Isabel’s adventures work for you” — Ottawa Review of Books

“Brilliantly stylish, hilariously written and prone to an iconoclasm that breaks the fourth wall whenever our narrator has the urge, like the Asimov Robot novels or even 1974’s Chinatown, the point of the story isn’t so much “whodunit” as an intricate world-building.” — Edmonton Journal

“Dorsey pushes the reader to confront their biases, but she serves this up alongside a hearty dose of humour, resulting in a work of fiction that both entertains and educates.” — Alberta Views

“Brilliantly written, gender-and-genre bending, and immensely fun while nonetheless elegantly and insightfully touching on a variety of social issues.” — Greg Bechtel, author of Boundary Problems, for the Writers’ Trust of Canada

From the Publisher

2020-07-29
An anonymous investigator delves into a MacGuffin of a murder designed to showcase her outrageous lifestyle.

A postmodern girl living in a postmodern world, the unnamed protagonist of Dorsey’s series debut is a social worker who thinks about posting a classified ad for sex work in order to make her rent at Epitome Apartments. Although being ambisexual could double her client base, she’s dragged out of her fantasy when her powers of observation and general free time are called on to solve a crime. Her neighbor and sort-of-friend, who’s nicknamed Hep for her resemblance to Katharine Hepburn, learns that her granddaughter Madeline Pritchard’s body has been found in a river and seeks someone who can get to the bottom of things. An actual sex worker, not just one in her head, Maddie had been busy getting off drugs and trying to make something of herself. Who would’ve wanted to kill someone life had already brought so low? Through a series of facetiously titled chapters—such as "Underwear Is My Baby Tonight?"—the heroine dives into the case, ably supported by the requisite cast of unusual secondary characters. These include her friend and neighbor Denis, described as “the guy the term flaming faggot was invented to describe”; her cat, Fuckwit, whom she tries to rename Bunnywit so as not to offend her relatives; and a homeless woman–turned–potential love interest. The amusement these descriptions inspire may well predict different readers’ enjoyment of the whole story.

A strained but relentlessly clever read.

Kirkus Reviews