HEADS-UP! TWISTY PLOTTING, SLY WIT, AND OVER-THE TOP HUMOR AHEAD!

In this wacky and hilarious whodunit, private eye Lee Alvarez slips into the role of magician's assistant for a fundraiser and finds herself dead center in a beyond-grisly murder.

Despite meticulous planning and rehearsal, the magician's guillotine trick goes as wrong as it possibly can when Lee pulls the cord and shimmies to divert attention from the horrifying fall of the blade. With her back to the guillotine, she's the last to know of the real-life beheading.

But the first to know she's the number one suspect. In a humiliating turn of events, she's summarily arrested and booked for the murder.

An easy situation to lose your own head in, but with three days before her arraignment, the entire Alvarez family investigative firm swings into action to save their star.

Luckily for the reader, the unfortunate events are just beginning. The wealthy magician's beneficiaries immediately begin coming to various sticky ends, including shootings, drownings, kidnappings, and oncoming SUVs. It seems he's left a chunk of his fortune to a tontine, to be divided among his two ex-wives, current cheating wife, twin nephews, and devoted butler-with the last survivor enjoying the whole income.

Someone evidently can't keep a cool head on their shoulders.

Fans of PI stories, cozy mysteries, and women sleuths will lose their own heads over Lee Alvarez and her adorable (and vexing) family of investigators! Lee's sharp and funny like her fellow female protagonists Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) and Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich), but she cleans up better - say, Nora to her dapper husband's Nick. And the rest of the large, loving, interfering, and resourceful Alvarez family will delight lovers of Lisa Lutz's family series, The Spellman Files.