SPYGIRL: True Adventures from My Life as a Private Eye

"As Spygirl, I could protect my friends, rebuke my enemies, and make the boys love me," proclaims Gray, recalling her recent three-year stint as a Manhattan private investigator. Flawlessly weaving reminiscences of childhood, college days at Brown and the low-paying job as a publishing "slave" she left for her new but decidedly unglamorous career as an agent, Gray's debut hilariously chronicles a roller-coaster love and social life amid the uncertainty of a new millennium. Overshadowing her recollections of the sometimes tedious e-commerce investigations she primarily worked on, while at a small PI firm called The Agency, are the quirky characters she encountered, including a Muslim taxi driver who was enamored of her; a teenaged Korean computer network manager with Tourette's syndrome and an obsession with the cartoon cat Garfield; a sexy drinking buddy who thought she was being stalked by magician David Blaine; and a co-worker with a cyst and the unfortunate appellation Assman. Loaded with Gen-X cultural references, familiar New York landmarks and experiences, and written in a self-deprecating, sometimes sarcastic tone, Gray proves she is "as self-hating as anyone worth knowing" among the artsy 20-something crowd, to which this memoir will probably appeal. (Sept.)