Iris De Vere may be immature and easily confused, but she's clear about one thing: she needs a job so she can stay in San Rafael with her grandmother. When the only thing available is office assistant at a one-man detective agency, she takes it. When she discovers the reason for the vacancy-the previous secretary's murder-she prays for the woman and keeps her head down.

It's not long before Iris stumbles onto a witness to the murder, putting herself and Gram in the killer's sights. After her vintage Nova is vandalized and her grandmother is attacked, Iris works to unravel the mystery and hold onto her job in this darkly humorous story.

B. Payton Settles, a Reading Specialist and resident of Sonoma, California, has authored The Something in the Attic, a Young Adult paranormal mystery, and Accidental Target, the first of a two-book thriller series. Her mysteries are set in northern California and tap into impressions of the area formed over years of living there.