"On this nice July morning in Parkland, North Carolina, the office of Madeline Maclin Investigations might as well have been an Egyptian tomb: hot, dusty, and dead."
 
It doesn’t help that her landlord Reid Kent, does a brisk business…and briskly hits on Mac to rejoin his agency. He maintains no one will hire a former Miss Parkland as a serious PI.

Mac has been friends forever with Jerry Fairweather. Jerry claims to be psychic and is, unlike his two brothers, somewhat screwy. And he refuses to claim a share in the Fairweather fortune. But he shares some good news with Mac—his Uncle Val has died and left him a house.
 
The two friends drive out to Celosia, a half hour away, where they discover a local beauty pageant in trouble and a house just perfect for setting up shop. A Psychic Shop.
 
The arrival of lawyer Olivia, Jerry's shark-like girlfriend, rouses both Mac's interest in the mystery at the pageant and the one in her own heart.

And then comes the first murder….

A Case of Imagination is Jane Tesh's playful first mystery, the start of a series by an author who admires Terry Pratchett, Martha Grimes, Carl Hiaasen, and P.G. Wodehouse.
 
NEW!

A Hard Bargain is the second in the Maclin Investigations series, continuing the saga of Mac and Jerry, along with more murder, more mystery and more beauty-queen mayhem!