FOUL PLAY

Fueled by Greek coffee, Sofie Metropolis investigates lost pets and cheating husbands.

Why is a nice Greek girl from Astoria, Queens, running a detective agency? After a last-minute hitch in her marriage plans ruins her fantasy of being the perfect Greek housewife, Sofie (Dirty Laundry, 2006) takes over her uncle’s agency while he’s on vacation in Greece. A rabid Mets fan, she’s delighted when the wife of the team’s hot new pitcher, Reni Venezuela, hires her to find out why he’s acting so strangely and neglecting her in bed. Sofie gets one of her employees to follow Reni on a road trip to Miami, where he gets photos of Reni’s sexual acrobatics with three groupies. But his wife is unmoved by this proof of his infidelity. Convinced something else is going on, she fires Sofie when Reni returns a changed man bearing a hefty diamond ring. On the domestic front, Sofie’s trying to get her ex-fiancé to drop the assault charges against her grandfather and fighting her attraction to two men, handsome Greek baker Dino and Australian mystery man Jake Porter, while reluctantly pursuing missing pets. A chance encounter with a missing poodle makes her a local hero, but her suspicions about Reni lead to real danger.

Though Sofie’s adventurous life in the Greek community makes for pleasant reading, she’s still a pale shadow of Stephanie Plum.