Maggie McGowen Series by Wendy Hornsby
Maggie McGowen #2
Midnight Baby
Wendy Hornsby
In Los Angeles making a documentary about upscale day cares, Maggie
MacGowen visits MacArthur Park to get contrasting footage of the
pubescent prostitutes that populate its dark corners. There she meets
Pisces, a fourteen-year-old hooker with manners that don’t match her
profession. As they bond over a plate of pastrami, Maggie talks her into
spending the night in a shelter. But Pisces comes with baggage: a
nine-year-old hoodlum named Sly. Maggie takes them both to a convent,
where they are fed, bathed, and tucked into bed, just like normal
children. The next day, Pisces is dead, her throat slashed by an unknown
hand. The Los Angeles Police Department has
little time for murdered hookers, so it falls to Maggie to find the
killer. The keys to the case are the young girl’s manners, and the fact
that she died with her virginity intact.
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Maggie McGowen #8
The Hanging
Wendy Hornsby
When her TV series is abruptly canceled, investigative filmmaker Maggie MacGowen accepts a short-term contract to teach film production at a local community college and finds herself in the middle of an explosive power struggle. In an era of budget cuts, the community college President arouses faculty and student animosity with his expensive building program. When Maggie finds the college president hanging in the building’s stairwell, suspicion falls on her young friend Sly Miller. A world-class artist, his sculpture was supposed to be hanging in place of the body. That’s only the beginning of a twisty plot dealing with the aesthetics and business of art, a billion-dollar art-for-arms deal; political corruption and cronyism; and issues of art forgery and journalistic ethics, all capped off by a stunning denouement.
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