Early in Isaacs's winning second outing for Corie Geller (after 2019's Takes One to Know One), the former FBI agent's father, retired NYPD detective Daniel Schottland, reconnects with April Brown, whose parents died in an arson when she was five years old. Though Schottland and his colleagues never identified the arsonist, they assumed the target was April's father, Seymour, who laundered money for the Russian mob. April--now a Rutgers University film professor obsessed with old movies--reports to Schottland that an SUV with obscured plates attempted to run her down on the school's campus. Local authorities dismiss any connection to April's childhood attack, but she remains unconvinced. Desperate for an escape from their "unremittingly suburban" routines and hoping to forestall another attempt on April's life, Schottland and Corie set up an ad hoc PI office in the Gellers's Long Island McMansion and start digging into Seymour's sordid past. Offbeat characters, witty narration, and a winsome father-daughter dynamic complement Isaacs's clever if madcap plot. Fans of breezy suspense will be delighted. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (May)

Seymour Brown, money launderer for the Russian Mafia, was killed along with his wife in an arson fire at their Brooklyn home. Their five-year-old daughter, April, managed to escape. Twenty years later, someone makes an attempt on April's life, and she contacts the original NYPD detective in the case, Daniel Schottland, who happens to be Corie Geller's father. Corie, a retired FBI agent, last seen in Takes One to Know One (2019), weathered the COVID-19 pandemic in a Long Island McMansion with her husband and daughter and persuaded her mother and now-retired father to move in with them. Father and daughter, with assistance from friends and former colleagues, not to mention some heavily Botoxed Manhattan Beach "Housewives," use every parkway, bridge, and tunnel in the greater metropolitan area to arrive at a most unusual conclusion. Corie may be somewhat subdued by suburbia, but her professional skills are still sharp, as is her banter. A most enjoyable read. Fans will hope to hear from that new PI firm, Schottland & Geller, sometime soon.

In this follow-up to Takes One To Know One (2019), an ex--FBI agent and her retired cop father team up again to solve a homicide cold case. Still suffering PTSD symptoms from the last FBI case she consulted on, Corie Geller has settled into a quiet post-pandemic life on Long Island as an "underemployed suburban wife and mother" with her husband, daughter, and her Queens-based parents, who moved into the guest suite during the initial lockdown. But when Corie's father, former NYPD detective Dan Schottland, is contacted by April Brown, the sole survivor of a two-decades-old unsolved arson that killed her parents, Corie gets pulled into helping him investigate a potential murder attempt on April--someone driving a dark SUV tried to run down the film studies professor on the Rutgers University campus. Was the attack related to the murders of Seymour Brown, a brutal man who laundered money for the Russian mob, and his wife, Kim? More than 40 years ago Isaacs burst onto the publishing scene with the bestselling Compromising Positions, a comic mystery mocking suburban mores. Unfortunately, she breaks no new ground here; her dull storyline is slowed down by the constant observational digressions of the characters. Everyone talks, talks, talks, and they don't always stick to the point, as in the conversation about Seymour's memorial service, which devolves into a comparison of funeral rites among different ethnic and religious groups, much to Dan's (and the reader's) annoyance. While true to life, this doesn't make for stimulating reading. Likewise, Isaacs' noted snarky humor now feels stale. The action only picks up in the book's final third, and by then the reader doesn't much care. Only for die-hard Isaacs fans, who will get the title's Jim Croce reference. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.