Maybe somebody was taking Shakespeare too literally. The first book of Marian Allen’s projected mystery series begins with a hit-and-run. The victim: an assistant district attorney with a vast wealth of people who, at the very least, didn’t mourn his passing.

Bar Sinister (A Spadena Street Mystery)

Juss — Injustice H. Chocolate (named and raised by hippies) — questions the usefulness of her Life Coach work and hires a secretary to prove its importance. Prim and efficient Kerry Dashingly can hardly wait to tell his wife that his latest secretary temp job is in a miniature castle in a neighborhood of Disneyesque architecture. Kerry hasn’t even begun when he gets a call from his hapless cousin, Abby: A man she openly hated is dead, and the police found unspecified evidence in the back of her car. Juss immediate attaches herself to the problem, determined to help, even if it kills her.

Spadena Street is a two-block Storybook Style neighborhood with a past as corporate housing for privileged employees of a now-defunct factory. Some of its mysteries are connected to that past, some are connected to the characters of the people who lived there or live there now. Some are connected only by the networks of the current residents. Some just are.

Available in print and for Kindle.