DEB ON ARRIVAL--LIVE AT FIVE

Introducing Dallas’s Debutante Detective Agency, which deals in minor mysteries and major sass.

Debutante/college student/Southern charmer Dainty Prescott’s got a bit of a problem. Her perfect-on-paper boyfriend Drex seems to be cheating on her with Paislee Pfeiffer, the wife of their TV-producer boss. She knows enough not to make a scene—a fatal no-no for a lady of The Rubanbleu—but how in the world will she find a replacement escort to her sister’s coming-out ball? Plus, Gordon Pfeiffer thinks Dainty would make the perfect amateur sleuth to get to the bottom of his wife’s affair. Dainty, who already knows more than she wants to, can’t say no when Mr. Pfeiffer promises her a full-time externship in exchange for any information she can ferret out. And that’s not all. Dainty is tripped up in what she might call a petite mess when she’s almost arrested for accidentally running another red light. Officer Buckman—Butt Man, as Dainty calls him—is poised to let Dainty off the hook for her criminal offense but is determined to give her a hard time in the most pleasant and flirtatious way possible. The zany cast is rounded out by some close girlfriends and Dainty’s proper grandmother, whom Dainty wishes didn’t carry the family gene for ADOS (“Attention deficit—oh, shiny!”).

Though Moore (Woman Strangled—News at Ten, 2009, etc.) doesn’t write well enough to maintain her heroine’s distinctive voice while she juggles her riotously complicated life, it’s impossible to not get wrapped up in her debutante’s debut.