Cursed: A Reagan Reilly Mystery

Cursed opens on a cold and gray January morning. Sleet and snow are swirling as Regan arrives at a warehouse in Long Island City with a trunk full of her old case files from Los Angeles. After carting all her boxes into a storage unit, she heads back out into the snow, and her cell phone rings.

Abigail Feeney, a young woman who had lived across the hall from Regan in an apartment complex in the Hollywood Hills, is on the line. Abigail believes her life has been cursed since birth. She was born on Friday the 13th of January, and her parents gave her a name with 13 letters. A hairdresser on movie sets, Abigail was recently injured at work when a piece of scaffolding fell and knocked her over, and her arm was broken in two places. But that isn't why she is calling. "Regan!" she exclaims. "The 'no good bum' has been spotted in town. I desperately need the money he owes me. Can you please come out here and help me find him?"

Regan immediately knows the identity of the "no good bum."

Within hours Regan is on a flight to Los Angeles where her adventure with Abigail will take her from the beaches of Malibu, to the mountains north of the city, to the renovated lofts of downtown L.A. Regan starts to feel Abigail's curse is contagious as she encounters a cast of characters who aren't always welcoming. Some are downright dangerous. And there's one who is the most dangerous of all....

©2009 Carol Higgins Clark; ©2009 Simon and Schuster