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From acclaimed humorist Ellis Weiner comes a stylish

-Robert B. Parker, author of Stone Cold

From Ellis Weiner, former editor and founding columnist at such legendary magazines as National Lampoon and Spy as well as a contributor to The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and many more, comes DROP DEAD, MY LOVELY (NAL Hardcover; March 2004; $23.95), a debut novel that’s drop-dead funny.

Meet Pete Ingalls, P.I. Those are his initials. Oh yeah, and he’s also a private investigator. Or at least he thinks he is. Ingalls was a mug that worked in a New York bookstore. Seems this Ingalls guy gets whacked on the head by a big pile of hardcovers, and when he comes to, he’s making with the wisecracks and tough talk and doesn’t know anyone from the store or any other part of his life. So he does what any smart guy would – collects on his insurance, rents an office, puts on the wingtips and fedora and opens his own private investigation agency.

Somehow this incompetent and clueless gumshoe manages to take on a couple of cases from some dames. He’s got a staff of one – actress/temp Stephanie Constantino is the doll that answers the phone. She’s got a mouth on her and she’s not afraid to use it, but she’s got nice gams, so Pete lets it slide. (Besides she’s got a bit of a talent for solving crimes.) Although Stephanie is the real brains behind the outfit, it’s bumbling Pete’s outrageous suggestions and inept actions that lead to the unraveling of a very tangled web of deceit, and the nabbing of a murderer. This is Pete Ingalls’s first case – and whodunit is only half the story.

Ellis Weiner was an original columnist for Spy Magazine ("How To Be A Grownup") and was an editor of National Lampoon from 1976-1978. He contributed to all the best group satire projects of the day, including the Not The New York Times, Off The Wall Street Journal, The Post New York Post, Playbore, and The Eighties: A Look Back. He has published numerous humor pieces in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Magazine, among others.

DROP DEAD, MY LOVELY

by Ellis Weiner

NAL Hardcover; March 2004; $23.95

ISBN 0-451-21117-0

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