Michael Z. Lewin

"Mordantly funny, beguiling in the extreme," said Booklist when this second novel about the Lunghi family of private detectives was published in 1999.

When I began to write about the three generations of Lunghis, I’d never heard of any PI stories involving a family of detectives. Neither had Carol Harper reviewing the first novel, FAMILY BUSINESS. In Deadly Pleasures she wrote, “I can think of no other series, anywhere, which features a family which owns and works from a private investigation firm.”

Being different doesn’t necessarily make it good, of course, but a lot of people do like the series. John Coleman in the Times in London, for one: “How these [plot elements] are connected and what the brilliantly characterised Lunghis, from the Old Man down to the school kids, separately get up to is very much the extremely funny Lewin’s business. Totally beguiling, with the lightest of dry touches.”

There were other nice reviews in the US and UK, but you get the idea. No blood and guts, but I work hard trying to make what seems light-hearted have darker undertones, if you care to listen for them.

So far (August 2004) there are two Lunghi novels and eight Lunghi stories. The first six stories are collected in THE RELUCTANT DETECTIVE with the two newest ones due before long in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.