Drop Dead, My Lovely
by By Weiner, Ellis
Category: Fiction , Mystery & Detective , Hard-Boiled

Meet Pete Ingalls, a tough-talking, hard-boiled private investigator who sets up shop in New York City and commences looking for trouble. He rents an office, places an ad, and starts receiving clients - real dames with real problems. And then a perfectly nice citizen turns up perfectly dead.Ingalls is ready. He's got the suit. He's got the fedora. He's got the initials P.I. And he's got the savvy and the cynicism of a battle-wary gumshoe who's seen it all.Except he hasn't seen it all. In fact he hasn't seen anything and doesn't know what the hell he's doing. In Pete Ingalls's deeply confused mind, he walks the mean streets like some kind of Philip Marlowe clone, a brave and incorruptible champion of the truth. The reality is somewhat different. And everyone he meets thinks he's putting them on.Cute? It gets better. Lucky for Ingalls, he's got a secretary - Stephanie Constantino, an aspiring actress in need of a day job. She's got a mouth on her and she's not shy about expressing her opinions - to Pete, his clients, cops, and killers. But she has nice gams and (unlike her boss) a real talent for solving crimes. First, though, she has to be convinced that this delusional nut bar is for real. It's Pete Ingalls's first case - and who dunit is only half the story.