DON'T CROSS MO ELLERY

Two veteran authors join forces under a pseudonym to launch a series about a wildly unlikely amateur sleuth.

Mo Ellery never wanted to get involved in detection. All she wanted was to hold on to her live-in boyfriend and keep her job at a Chicago marketing agency. After losing both within a few minutes of each other (the losses are connected, but you’ll never guess how), she moves to downscale Buffalo Park and takes the only job she can get, as a crossing guard near a city school. A driver with a car full of poodles constantly harasses her until the whole crew gets swallowed up in a sinkhole that opens beneath her eyes, leaving him dead and the poodles in urgent need of adoption. Scared of being called out by the police, Mo reluctantly agrees to take custody of the late Cran Johnston’s show dogs—Jean Valjean, Louis XIV, and Jacques Cousteau—with the idea of fobbing them off on Tond Johnston, Cran’s brother and heir, or on Benny, the dog trainer Cran had just fired, or, really, on pretty much anyone. Along the way she gets sucked into investigating not one but two maybe-murders. Working with Marlowe Golden, a pink-haired 12-year-old who shifts smartly from giving Mo a hard time about crossing the street to installing herself as Mo’s sidekick, she follows a series of hunches that cast suspicion on nearly everyone in Chicago, from Alderman Merle Carey to Tasha, his hot assistant, who quickly becomes Mo’s new lover. The frantic pace will make many readers accept a plot that’s even wackier than the protagonist.

Move over, Ellery Queen. There’s a new Ellery in town, and she puts a whole new spin on being a queen.