Maggie Laurent is a sassy Irish-French American who learns to box and shoot and earns her living as an intrepid private detective in San Francisco in the 1930s. Through her investigations we meet an interesting and diverse cast of characters that Noir author Raymond Chandler would be proud of.

But when her enquiries into why a young woman has broken off her engagement change into a murder investigation, she is drawn into a murky, political and financial plot that threatens her life.

I enjoyed this cinematic, funny, murder mystery which is a sequel but which reads just as well as a stand alone novel.

Book two of Johnson’s “Fog City Noir” series, starring the undauntable Maggie Laurent — the hardboiled secretary for a hardboiled detective who has (likely permanently) left San Francisco for cooler climes allowing her to try to make it on her own (read episode one — Fog City — for the full skinny). Starting from a few seemingly small requests, Maggie ends up in the middle of the historic Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) often violent organizing efforts crossed with some nasty business practices and (of course) crooked politicians. Great dialog, plenty of action, a strong female lead who learns to box and shoot a gun, to the great distress of her “loving” family, and enough reflection on her part to keep me happy. Plenty of good characters — some over the top, like Dickie who has got to be based on Truman Capote with plenty of endearing but wicked mannerisms, but all interesting and likable.

A fun read and I look forward to the next in the series.

San Francisco is feeling the effects of the great depression like everywhere else. Many people are out of work, and the Moore Detective agency’s owner, Nick, has just decamped to Chicago, leaving Maggie to try and run the business herself and get some clients before it goes under. A wealthy local friend of Maggie’s, wants her to find out what is bothering Herman, a local cab driver whose fiancée Vera has dumped him. Could the handsome Irishman she met be involved? The investigation isn’t as simple as it seems because Maggie learns more than she bargains for about local labor unrest and union busting as politics, money, and murder collide in this historical mystery. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.