Bad, Bad Seymour Brown

Early in Isaacs’s winning second outing for Corie Geller (after 2019’s Takes One to Know One), the former FBI agent’s father, retired NYPD detective Daniel Schottland, reconnects with April Brown, whose parents died in an arson when she was five years old. Though Schottland and his colleagues never identified the arsonist, they assumed the target was April’s father, Seymour, who laundered money for the Russian mob. April—now a Rutgers University film professor obsessed with old movies—reports to Schottland that an SUV with obscured plates attempted to run her down on the school’s campus. Local authorities dismiss any connection to April’s childhood attack, but she remains unconvinced. Desperate for an escape from their “unremittingly suburban” routines and hoping to forestall another attempt on April’s life, Schottland and Corie set up an ad hoc PI office in the Gellers’s Long Island McMansion and start digging into Seymour’s sordid past. Offbeat characters, witty narration, and a winsome father-daughter dynamic complement Isaacs’s clever if madcap plot. Fans of breezy suspense will be delighted. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (May)