He Wasn’t There Again Today: An Epitome Apartments Mystery

Dorsey’s offbeat third mystery featuring an unnamed Canadian sleuth (following 2021’s What’s the Matter with Mary Jane?) seamlessly blends left-field humor and quality detecting. A former social worker fired for being queer, the narrator has encountered enough murder cases that she’s come to consider herself a Jessica Fletcher “re-imagined for the twenty-first century.” She gets involved in another homicide investigation after psychopath Lockwood Chiles, who killed her lover, Nathan Bierce, and her close friend, Priscilla Ann Gill, is found stabbed to death in his prison cell. Her personal vendetta against Chiles makes her the prime suspect, and as she struggles to exonerate herself, she faces down more violence: a homeless man has been kicked to death on the street beneath her apartment, possibly by a band of goons targeting the impoverished, and she determines to track them down. Can she face her grief, clear her name, and bring multiple murderers to justice? Dorsey nails his narrator’s voice, buttressing her top-notch sleuthing with cheeky footnotes addressed straight to the reader (“I want you to note that was one hell of a sentence, and still grammatical. Thank you Mrs. Lazarowich, Grade 10”). Admirers of Kinky Friedman’s gonzo mysteries will find much to enjoy. Agent: Wayne Arthurson, Rights Factory. (Oct.)