Nica of Los Angeles

by Sue Perry

Overview

Nica Sheridan Taggart Ambrose Taggart Ickovic (S.T.A.T.Ic.) craves action and change, which leaves her life as stable as old dynamite. She appoints herself a private detective and gets a mysterious case that leads her into adventures beyond imagining - and she's got a crazy imagination.

She enters a world of multiple dimensions called Frames, where buildings and lawn chairs can be sentient, a stray cat has great powers, books can be killers, and clouds can be spies. On the surface, Nica tackles missing person cases, while in the larger reality of the Frames she is swept into an escalating battle with stakes that could not be higher.

In this first book of the FRAMES quartet, a band of allies that includes structures, landforms, and creatures sets out to stop Warty Sebaceous Cysts, a repulsive trio. The Cysts casually commit genocide to free their imprisoned leader, Maelstrom, who would bring cruelty and horror to all the Frames. There is danger everywhere in the Frames, but also a mind-boggling expansion of reality. Nica feels challenged, engrossed, and strangely at home. As she sees it, she was born to travel the Frames.

=== (Excerpt follows) ===
I became aware that the air had changed. My office smelled like a forest just after a flash flood, when everything is power-washed and tree trunks are smeared with riverbed mud. Fresh and wild.

It took much strength to gently lower that window, but the stranger's arms - all sinew and muscle - showed no strain. I took a step back to get a fuller look and to get farther away. He was a wolf. I don't mean a predatory flirt, I mean he was long and lean and fast and dangerous: coarse black hair, ice-gray eyes and smile full of teeth, supreme confidence backed with survival instinct.

"Please sit down," I suggested or pleaded as I retreated behind my desk. As he complied, muscles flexed inside his garments, a loose cotton tunic and drawstring pants that were as gray as February.

She sat down, too. My other visitor was a princess: not as in daddy's spoiled girl, as in future queen of the fairies. She was as ethereal as he was earthy, exotic but I couldn't place the ethnic background. Cornsilk hair, slanted eyes like unpolished silver, her skin like the penny you've always kept in your pocket for luck. Her tunic was white as a desert sunrise. "We are in need of your detective arts," she said.

"That tends to be why people come to this office." The joke was stillborn. "I'm good with accents but I can't place yours. Where are you from?"

"Knowledge of our ancestry provides no value. We have need of your assistance," he said, in a voice that never needed help from anybody.

"The fate of the free worlds is at stake," she added, in a voice like the first spring breeze on snow.

"Oh-kay." Note to self, cancel ad in NUTJOB QUARTERLY.
====

Product Details

BN ID:	2940046019797
Publisher:	Sue Perry
Publication date:	09/04/2014
Series:	Frames , #1
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	394,262
File size:	463 KB

About the Author

... Concert stage, dark except for a deep blue spotlight. Singer drops to one knee and his narration evolves from murmur to rant. "This is the story of a man who got what he wanted but he lost what he had. He got what he wanted but he lost what he had. He got –" ...

It goes on forever. It's mesmerizing. Uncomfortable. Confessional.

Pretty sure this memory is from the time I saw James Brown, decades ago, but the lost identity of the singer isn't the point.

I've spent my life gazing across some fence or other, admiring greener grass over yonder. I've acted on so many impulses to jump the fence. No complaints, but it has sure taken me a long time to appreciate where I'm standing right now. And nowadays that blue spotlight chant fills my head whenever I contemplate a new jump.

Sometimes I jump back.

I was a low–budget television producer until I wrote a psychological thriller, "Was It A Rat I Saw", which Bantam–Doubleday–Dell published in hardcover in 1992. Soon after that I became the mother of twins, jumped into graduate school, and became a disaster scientist. I dabbled in academia, government research, and consulting.

I stopped writing fiction for nearly two decades, until I noticed how much I missed it. I resumed writing novels with the literary fiction "Scar Jewelry" about a family with secrets that started in the era of Los Angeles punk and persist for decades. I'm in the midst of a speculative detective series FRAMES, with "Nica of Los Angeles", "Nica of the New Yorks", and "Boredom Fighter" so far. I've just completed a nine-novella series, the young adult paranormal horror romance, "DDsE".

Funny. Back in the day, I had a single book idea at a time. Now I'm flooded with them, can't keep up with them, though I write just about every day.

I live in southern California. I had to leave for five years to confirm this is where I belong. I live with multiple cats, comfortably close to my twins and granddaughter. Like my life paths, my friends and family are all over the damn place. I like to visit them, spend time at the ocean, explore cities, and go out to hear live music.

Editorial Reviews

2015-07-21
In this first installment of a planned series, Perry (Was It a Rat I Saw?, 2013) blurs genre lines, combining a hard-boiled detective story with urban fantasy. Veronica Static, known to most people as Nica, is a Los Angeles native embarking on a new enterprise as a private detective. Despite her lack of experience, credentials, or license, she manages to acquire three separate cases in one afternoon: a creepy, strung-out couple searching for a duffel bag; a pair of concerned godparents looking for their missing teenage niece; and a wild, ethereal couple, Anya and Anwyl, who simply want Nica to accompany them to a mysterious meeting. As she pursues each of her investigations, the three plot threads begin to overlap. When Nica goes with Anya and Anwyl, she's dragged into the world of Frames, which are essentially alternate, coexisting universes. She's soon tasked with helping solve a dispute that, according to Anwyl, threatens all the free Frames. The first of her Frame visits results in her introduction to the local Watts Towers landmarks, which turn out to be sentient. Along with a substitute janitor, Hernandez, she sets out to observe areas where refugees from other Frames wander into her own and determine what imminent threat they might pose. Like any good noir story, the narrative is told from a first-person perspective, and Nica is a chatty narrator with an irreverent, self-deprecating sense of humor. Having a female detective in this genre is a refreshing change from the usual, and the conversational tone of the writing makes it all easily digestible. The fantasy elements are well thought out, though they occasionally overshadow the story's mystery elements. Perry also has a flair for detailed, unique similes: "When he saw me, he reacted with one of his giant smiles that…lit his eyes like a flashbulb light." A fun, fast-paced novel suitable for readers who appreciate grit, sarcasm, mystery, and dimension-hopping.

Kirkus Reviews