Personal Effects

By Marissa Piesman

Thirty-something NYC lawyer Nina Fischman is lonely. She choose the professional life, and even though she has been involved with several men, none of the relationships stood the test of time. Now she second guesses herself, comparing herself to her sister, married to a successful man and with young children. Frankly, Nina is disappointed with herself.
Recently, her best friend Susan has moved back to NYC. In the past Susan has been a bit of a gadabout, unsettled in her life, both working and personal. Susan too, is questioning her past choices and has returned to New York because she has decided she wants to be a married woman. To help her find the right man, Susan has placed personal ads in various New York publications and has been on a few dates with men who responded to the ads. But one of those men turns out to be a dangerous person and Susan ends up strangled and dead.
Nina, as Susan's closest confidant, works with the police to figure out who the killer is. Unfortunately, Susan didn't reveal a lot of detail about the men in her life. All Nina knows is that Susan said he was good-looking, physically fit, had good hair, liked hiking and wore contacts. Susan never told anyone the man's name.
So, together with police detective James Williams, Nina will place personal ads similar to those that Susan had placed, hoping to attract the killer. Which means that Nina will find herself going out on dates with several strangers, hoping and dreading that one of them may be a murderer.

This was an interesting if unlikely story. I really can't see the police ever agreeing to such a lamebrained scheme. Or that the killer wouldn't moderate his behavior, at least for quite a while, rather than continuing on as if nothing terrible had happened.
But despite the weak plot, I did enjoy the story. It was fun following Nina on her dating adventures with the various suspects.

Check out the review by Publishers Weekly

On a side note, this is what the characters in the book have to say about donald trump:

Well, I don't understand why the public is so fascinated by him. To me he is just another boring, narcissistic businessman. There's nothing cool about him.

This book is copyright 1991. So even back then New Yorkers were seeing through trump.

Unorthodox Practices

By Marissa Piesman

"Well, in  nutshell, this is what's happened to date," Ida said. "I've had a cockroach problem that I've been battling for years. My neighbor Mrs. Gross, on the other hand, never seemed to have any roaches. After she died, my son-in-law wanted to take a look at her apartment. He thought he might want to buy and resell it."        "Did Mrs. Gross own it?" asked Grant?          "No, she was a non-purchasing tenant. A few years after the building converted, the original landlord sold her apartment to a Netherlands Antilles corporation. Anyway, I went with my son-in-law and a real estate agent to look at the apartment and noticed that there was absolutely no evidence of roaches. There was also a white powder spread around the place that was clearly a method of exterminating. That reminded me of the fact that this Netherlands Antilles corporation had always sent a special exterminator to Mrs. Gross's apartment. They never used the regular building exterminator."      "How did you know that?" asked Grant.          "As a member of the board of directors, I am in close contact with the managing agent who had mentioned it to me over the years. Also, I had discussed the matter with Mrs. Gross. We were friendly." ......       "Anyway," Ida continued, "after I saw Mrs. Gross's empty apartment, I was very impressed with how roach-free it was. I decided to call that exterminator to see if he would do my apartment also. But the lawyer who is the contact person for the owner of the apartment refused to give me the name. He was surprisingly hostile and defensive to my innocent request. So Nina and I went back to the apartment with the real-estate agent and stole samples of the white powder. ...... Then we gave the samples to my son-in-law to have them chemically analyzed. He called today to tell me that the samples taken from the kitchen contained digitalis in a fairly high quantity." .....        "The digitalis was only in the kitchen sample....Clearly Mrs. Gross was meant to eat it. I'm sure she was poisoned....I don't know how she ingested it. But I'm convinced we have a murder on our hands."

 And that is the plot, as it says, in a nutshell. Someone is killing off old ladies. It will be up to Nina and Ida to figure out exactly who and why.

This was a good read. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is a murder mystery, but the emphasis is really on Nina and her life in New York City. It is not your typical murder mystery, no blood is shed and no one ever threatens or attempts to kill Nina or her mom, Ida. It is just a really good story.