Callahan Garrity Series

“Fresh, confident, intelligent and amusing. Grab a cold drink, put your feet up, and enjoy yourself.”— Sue Grafton The first entry in a thoroughly original and witty series that sets Atlanta house cleaner cum sleuth Callahan Garrity on the trail of a client’s missing au pair, now published under the name Mary Kay Andrews for the first time. Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta's elite. She's also a former cop and a part-time sleuth, and she and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. Callahan is on the job when her client announces that her pretty, nineteen-year-old Mormon nanny has disappeared—along with jewelry, silver, and some sensitive real-estate documents. Soon Callahan and her crew of eccentric cleaners are involved in a job messier than any they've ever encountered. Illicit love triangles, crooked business deals, long-distance scams— it's going to require some industrial-strength sleuthing on Callahan's part to solve this one.

“Bright and sassy.” — New York Times Book Review The second entry in the thoroughly original and witty series about Callahan Garrity in which the cleaning lady cum sleuth runs afoul of right-wing radicals and a dangerous collector when she’s hired to find the valuable and controversial diary of a Civil War madam. Former Atlanta police officer Callahan is known for scrubbing all kinds of muck, but she has no idea what she’s getting herself into when she is hired by Elliott Littlefield, a notorious Atlanta antiques dealer. Right from the start, Callahan’s job turns into a lively quest to find a priceless Civil War diary penned by an infamous madam. Soon Callahan and her team become entangled with a motley group of Civil War collectors, right-wing extremists, and nosy teens, making the case messier and tougher to clean. The witty Callahan Garrity mysteries by Mary Kay Andrews always entertain and delight.

“Callahan and her cohort of continuing characters. . . are great company. . . . If Happy Never After were a song, we’d be dancing in the streets.” — San Jose Mercury News In the fourth installment of Andrews’s acclaimed series about Callahan Garrity, Atlanta’s most inquisitive cleaning lady, she sets out to prove the innocence of a rock idol of her childhood. Callahan Garrity is a former Atlanta cop, a part-time sleuth and full-time owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta’s elite. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. Callahan needs all the help she can get trying to keep Rita Fontaine, a washed-up 1960s teenage rock star, out of jail. It’s nothing less than murder when Stu Hightower, the vain, temperamental president of a thriving Atlanta recording company, is found dead in the designer den of his posh home. His only companions are the slug in his heart and Rita, dead-drunk and looking guilty. Callahan believes in Rita’s innocence because, after all, Hightower had made more enemies than records in his career. But discovering who hated him enough to kill him could send her floating down a river of lost dreams without a paddle.

“The prose is tart and lively, the storytelling swift-paced, and the large cast and multiple plot lines deftly handled.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution In the third book in this acclaimed series, Callahan Garrity runs afoul of her own family when she insists on investigating the carjacking death of the cousin she idolized. Some people might call Callahan Garrity nosy, but she prefers to think of her tendency toward snooping as a healthy interest in the truth. So when news of her cousin Patti’s death reaches her, Callahan shakes off her House Mouse cleaning uniform to don her detective’s cap. It’s not that she doesn’t have confidence in the Atlanta police—she used to be among their ranks—it’s just that the crime seems too incongruous with Patti’s suburban life to be an accident.

“Truly exciting...[Andrews] has moved into the winner’s circle with Heart Trouble.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch The fifth installment of this popular series sends cleaning lady/sleuth Callahan Garrity after the person who murdered a woman the entire city loves to hate. Callahan Garrity has her hands full trying to expand her House Mouse cleaning business. So she’s reluctant to take on a client in need of detective services, especially when that client is the most notorious woman in Atlanta—Whitney Albright Dobbs. Whitney is a wealthy socialite who, while under the influence, hit and killed a young black girl and just kept driving. Whitney’s light sentence has set the city’s racial tensions on simmer, and Callahan is not especially keen on helping track down Whitney’s soon-to-be ex-husband’s hidden assets. Against her better judgment, Callahan launches a full-out search for Dr. Dobbs’s dollars. But it only takes a glance to see that more than Whitney’s alimony is at stake.

“Callahan Garrity mops up the scene in an Atlanta neighborhood where murder meets its match in this feisty, funny heroine. STRANGE BREW offers up a tidy mystery witha polished writing style and industrial strength suspense.” — Sue Grafton The sixth book in the series finds Callahan Garrity facing a brew of community troubles - as her bohemian Atlanta neighborhood morphs into a trendy haven for yuppies - and an old flame. Sleuth Callahan Garrity has cautiously watched her hometown be transformed - and just as she fears, too much cappuccino and new money can be a bad mix. When the young owner of a microbrewery looking to score prime real estate turns up dead, neighborhood local Wuvvy – an aging flower child and the brewster’s biggest foe – becomes the prime suspect. Digging for evidence to clear Wuvvy, Callahan isn’t prepared for the succulent secrets she finds, nor the shocking truths that force her to reassess old friendships and an old love.

“Midnight Clear explores the family ties that bind and blind...[It] will make you laugh, make you cry, make you mad, and make you wonder right up until the very last page.”  — Boston Globe In this heartwarming, suspenseful, and hilarious novel, Callahan Garrity and the outrageous band of ""girls"" in her Atlanta cleaning crew join together during the Christmas rush to prove that her ne'er-do-well brother didn't kill his tawdry estranged wife. It's a few days before Christmas, and sometime sleuth/full-time cleaning lady Callahan Garrity has things under control for a change, until her brother Brian shows up. He's kidnapped his toddler daughter, Maura, from his estranged wife, a vengeful shrew with the law on her side. When his ex-wife is found dead, the cops suspect Brian. To save her brother and her holiday, Callahan, along with her irascible mom, Edna, and a gaggle of House Mouse employees, will crisscross yuletide Atlanta, going everywhere the search for truth leads.

“Entertaining. . . . If you are up for a big helping of humor and heartbreak, insanity and intrigue, read Irish Eyes.” — Orange Country Register Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta's elite. She's also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. When Callahan Garrity gets caught in a liquor store holdup on the way home from a St. Paddy's Day party, one of her best friends is shot. Callahan and her House Mouse cleaning crew dive into the investigation—only to discover that her old friend might have been working both sides of the law as an accomplice in a string of robberies. It will take every trick they've got to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding an Irish police organization and prove that the case is more than it seems.