This Dame for Hire — Sandra Scoppettone

New York, 1943. Almost anything in pants has gone to serve Uncle Sam in the war -- including Woody Mason, the head of a Manhattan detective agency. Left to run the show is his secretary, Faye Quick, who signed on as a steno, not a shamus. But Faye's got moxie -- which she'll need when she stumbles over a dead girl in the street and takes on her first murder case.

The victim wasn't any ordinary girl: Claudette West was the daughter of a prominent Park Avenue family. Claudette's father is convinced that greed was the motive, that Claudette's working-class boyfriend killed the girl because she threw him off the gravy train. Faye, however, isn't so sure -- and she soon uncovers shocking surprises in an investigation with more turns and dips than the Coney Island Cyclone.