A PLUS ONE FOR MURDER

Bradford launches a new series about a failing travel agent’s ingenious plan to reinvent herself that goes horribly wrong.

The travel industry’s in a funk, and Emma Westlake hasn’t booked a client in months. Her lifeline is her relationship with Dottie Adler. Dottie’s late husband arranged to have Emma paid handsomely for having tea weekly with his frail wife, a task Emma has come to enjoy. Still, Emma’s shocked when Dottie suggests that Emma should recruit other clients to pay for her companionship. While Emma mulls this suggestion, Dottie works the phones. Soon Emma’s agreed to accompany a senior citizen who gives his name only as Big Max to a dance at the local senior center and to serve as exercise buddy to Stephanie Porter, a workaholic who wants to develop a social life. Hoping to expand her pool of clients beyond the ones Dottie has referred, Emma prints up business cards offering her services as a companion for all of life’s plus-one moments. The listing she posts on a virtual community bulletin board nets her first non-Dottie-connected client, Brian Hill, who wants Emma to accompany him to a local club’s open mic night. Unfortunately, the only part of the poetry slam that interests Brian is the slam; before dinner, he shares with Emma a list of prominent people—all present in the room—he plans to insult publicly. Naturally, he falls over dead before he can get started. Emma panics, leaving the room with a list of now-probable suspects, and is faced with an increasingly complicated set of choices when Deputy Jack Riordan, the investigating officer, befriends her and Scout, her adorable puppy.

Despite her quirky premise, Bradford ends up hugging a familiar cozy trail.