Created by Lise S. Baker
The winner of the 1998 St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Press Private Eye Writers of America Best First P.I. Novel Contest, Lise Baker’s The Losers’ Club introduced a strong new voice in San Francisco private investigator CAL BRANTLEY. Dispatched to investigate a wrongful death case in Reno by her new employers, Worldwide Investigations, a freak accident involving a child and a casino escalator, Cal is chagrined to discover they’ve saddled her with a chaperone — an obnoxious former LAPD cop named Denny Wickerstaff.
Cal cracks wise, and offers us her hard-eyed view of things, yet within her chest beats the heart of a poet. Like the seedy motel whose “…lights on the neon marquee lit up like white powder on a whore’s face.”
Not bad, huh? Adding to the versimiltude is Cal’s at-times-frantic juggling of her personal and professional lives. This is a real person, living in the real world, but strong enough to tell it like it is.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author Lise S. Baker is, in fact, a real-life private eye herself, which no doubt goes a long way to explaining the attention to detail evident here. A promising debut that, unfortunatley never resulting in a series. Still, Baker’s not givng up. A sof December 2015, she’s got seven more books in the series that she’s still shopping around, and she’s still working as a P.I. In fact, she was given the Investigator of the Year Award by World Association of Detectives. in 2011. as she says, “I am not going to give up!”
NOVELS
- The Losers’ Club (2000) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- The St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel Contest
Winners 1986-2014.
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And thanks, Lise, for the nudge.
