Heading Uptown

The New York Times Book Review calls Marissa Piesman's Nina Fischman mystery series "hilarious...the Fischman women are delightfully brash." Nina fought for angry tenants in Unorthodox Practices and single women in Personal Effects. In Heading Uptown she does battle with smarmy suburban businessmen and big-haired housewives on Long Island. Manhattan's Upper West Side is Nina Fischman's natural habitat. Her meddling mother, Ida Fischman, keeps her updated on the latest single men in the area and reminds her when her figure begins to inch out of control. Although Nina works during the day as a housing court attorney downtown, she rarely ventures out of that forty-block square between the Hudson River and Central Park. With her aerobics class only a few steps away and Chinese food within shouting distance, who needs to? Like a bagel without cream cheese, Nina is out of sorts when she travels with Ida to family friend Helen Hirsch's funeral in Great Neck, Long Island. Not only does she have to spend an entire afternoon dodging highheeled mourners, but Ida reminds her that in a previous moment of generosity she'd agreed to be an alternate executor of Helen's will. To complicate matters further, the primary executor, Mark Hirsch, predeceased his mother under some rather unusual circumstances, which leaves Nina holding the executor bag. When Nina begins closing Helen's apartment in Queens, she meets young Lisa Hirsch, Mark's daughter and Helen's granddaughter. Lisa has her own theories about her father's death and wants Nina to look into her suspicions. Don't these people realize that Nina is not a probate specialist or a private investigator? With a mother like Ida, it's hard to keep any sort of professional acumen a secret.


Genre: Mystery