Getting Off on Frank Sinatra

Megan Edwards

Imbrifex Books Softcover $15 (309pp) 978-0-9972369-0-3

A young detective stumbles over clues in this light and amusing mystery.

Megan Edwards’s Getting Off on Frank Sinatra debuts a mystery series featuring Copper Black, a newbie writer for Sin City’s newspaper, the Las Vegas Light.

Young and ambitious, Copper wrangles an invitation to a diamond-and-champagne fundraiser seeking introductions to the city’s movers and shakers. She meets Vegas socialite Marilyn Weaver, who is involved with Parks Academy, a cutting-edge private school. When Marilyn is murdered, Copper gets caught up in the hunt for her killer.

Further complications arise, some lending to the story’s authentic foundations: Copper’s recent ex-boyfriend; a self-absorbed coworker whom she could fall for. A stint house-sitting finds Copper in a setting with mobsters, and there may be a sexual predator at Parks Academy. Even Copper’s brother finds himself in the mix, as he works to build a center for the homeless.

Copper becomes obsessed with finding Weaver’s killer. She comes to believe that there are connections with her brother’s project, the school, even the mobsters—all of which leaves her with little time to cope with personal issues, like her parents’ divorce following her father’s decision to come out of the closet.

Characters aren’t always fresh in the genre, including the stoic, hard-eyed Las Vegas policeman Detective Booth, who seems to show up at times that are inconvenient for Copper. Copper herself is written as a good-hearted millennial with a touch of attention deficit disorder. She speaks in snappy, sometimes off-kilter language; she is smart, but sometimes plagued with a short attention span. Hers is a personality that well suits her role as a detective, still learning while on the job.

With a narrative highlighted by light violence, and a fish-out-of-water protagonist stumbling