LOVE, HONOUR, AND O'BRIEN

A woman scorned hires a private detective, with decidedly unexpected results.

Leaving her boring fiancé and doting parents, Holly Love has moved to Australia’s Blue Mountain area, where she’s met, romanced and accepted a marriage proposal from charismatic Andrew McNish. When she arrives at his house on their wedding day, she finds a note reading, “Don’t try to find me,” an envelope containing $40, and not much else. Andrew has cleaned out their joint account, and Holly, left almost penniless, must sleep on the floor and eat scraps of cheese and pickles while debt collectors arrive in steady streams. Enraged, she calls a private detective, O’Brien, who agrees to take her case. But when she goes to his apartment office, she finds his dead body, a picture of Andrew and a mouthy parrot. After Holly convinces O’Brien’s neighbors in Mealey Marshes that she didn’t kill him, they befriend her and suggest she use his just-rented apartment. Naturally, Holly starts getting calls from people wanting O’Brien to investigate. She agrees to take on a case that may lead to Andrew. Delivered to a gloomy mansion by an Elvis impersonator driving a hearse, she learns that the wheelchair-bound owner, who claims Andrew is her half brother, thinks he has been murdered by one of the odd group of people living there. With the help of her new friends, one of them a psychic, Holly becomes embroiled in a desperate and dangerous adventure to track down her missing lover.

The prolific Australian author (The Makeover Murders, 1993, etc.) offers the hilarious first in a new series that mixes humor with mystery.