Compliments of a Friend

Compromising Positions’s Judith Singer is back in a story that delivers plenty of Susan Isaacs’s renowned wit and sharp-eyed observations of the contemporary scene—along with a riveting mystery!

Chic Vanessa Giddings, founder and CEO of Panache, the largest employment agency on Long Island, falls into a coma in the designer shoe department of Bloomingdale’s . . . and dies. It’s not long before Judith Singer, former housewife, current widow, and local history professor, decides to investigate. She cannot believe the official ruling: that her wildly successful, confident, and iron-willed neighbor committed suicide with a drug overdose. Vanessa was buying shoes, and Judith knows accessorizing is a life-affirming act. So was it foul play?

Tracking the gossip about the late Vanessa and trusting her own acute instincts about human nature, Judith encounters more than a few surprises (including a big romantic one) as she investigates the death—and the life—of the misjudged mogul who turned out to have been more vulnerable than anyone guessed.

This ebook features an afterword by Susan Isaacs, as well as an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from her personal collection.

Review“[Susan Isaacs is] a witty, wry observer of contemporary life.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Isaacs is a master of witty fiction with an undercurrent of emotional truth.” —USA Today

“One of pop literature’s most disarming and charming characters.” —Newsday

“I can think of no other novelist—popular or highbrow—who consistently celebrates female gutsiness, brains and sexuality. She’s Jane Austen with a schmear.” —National Public Radio’s Fresh Air

About the AuthorSusan Isaacs (b. 1943) is a New York Times bestselling author of mysteries and literary fiction. Born in Brooklyn, she worked in New York politics before writing her first mystery, Compromising Positions, in 1978. A runaway success, the story of a housewife-turned-detective was adapted into a film starring Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia. Chairman of the literary organization Poets Writers and a former president of the Mystery Writers of America, Isaacs is a winner of the John Steinbeck Award, the Marymount Manhattan Writing Center Award, and the Writers for Writers Award. She lives and works on Long Island.