“Workman’s Complication is not the kind of book that I tend to go for when I am searching for my next read – but I started this blog with the thought to actually expand my horizons on the kind of books that I have been reading and I hoped that this book (and its sequel) will be a step in the right direction – and boy, did my gamble pay off!

Kate, the protagonist of the story, is an actress – and while she would like to be known only for her acting like all actresses, she still has to supplement her income by taking extra jobs. Mostly, she earns extra cash aka rent money, by managing the apartment building she lives in, but sometimes she also helps her father Jimmy in his work as a Private Investigator.

At the start of the book, we meet a whole lot of characters, mostly the tenants of the building Kate is managing as well as other actors with a rehearsal the opening night of a play. All is going along swimmingly, well mostly, when Kate’s father is murdered, leaving her floundering.

Taking over for her father, she works on finding out exactly what happened with her father – the mystery is where this book is at but it is not all that this book is about.

It’s been a few days since I completed this book – and honestly I am speechless – at the kind of work that Mr. Leder has put in, the story he has weaved and the writing that has made me fall in love with every single character that he has given birth to.

It’s difficult to put in words the kind of impact this book has had on me (I ain’t a writer), but I am definitely going to try my best to do justice to this book.

Each chapter has a singularly hilarious title – a title that is apt to everything that will occur in that chapter all the while taking subtle digs, sarcasm and irony at its best. The humour throughout the book isn’t the in your face kind of humour, but the kind that takes its place in your mind, and even when you have closed the book, you can still remember titbits that happened in the oddest of places – it happened to me while I was in the middle of work and a serious case. ;)

The plot is rich and the characters make it diverse – the kind of relationship these characters have with each other is impossible to miss and is endearing to watch. Mr. Leder has given a realistic feel to his characters that I have rarely found in literature fiction novels.

But the best part? The best part was the mystery – I pride myself in understanding and solving mysteries before the author even gets to the BIG REVEAL – I cackle at my evil genius mind by pointing out the character responsible, even if I don’t really have all my ducks in a row, mostly instinctual, my gut has never failed me before, in fiction nor in reality!

But Mr. Leder basically just screws up my whole “Can do no wrong Investigator” vibe that I got going on! Do you have any idea how disheartening it was not to be able to know who the murderer actually was – this is the major reason why I came to admire Mr. Leder as an author – wanted to kill him for ruining my track record, but I admired him just the same!”

“Workman’s Complication by Rich Leder is the immensely entertaining first book in his series McCall & Company, following the exploits of down-on-her-luck private investigator/struggling actress Kate McCall. In the first installment, McCall tries to balance starring in an Off-Broadway vampire musical, investigating her father’s death at the Monument Insurance building, inheriting his PI business, and trying to solve her first case: a workman’s comp case where a construction worker broke his back and might be taking a benevolent old businessman for all his money.

Kate McCall is a great character for a private eye series: she’s a reluctant PI, but not too reluctant. Really, she was born for this. The set-up is a bit like the Fletch novels, in that she can use her acting skills, and wardrobe, to impersonate people and interrogate suspects. Given that she’s an Off-Broadway actress, these disguises don’t always work, but they’re always entertaining.

Writing a first-person female protagonist is a tough balance for Leder to handle, and her voice is deft and impressive. Kate McCall is both hardboiled and vulnerable. A pet peeve of mine is a protagonist who fights the premise of the story. Obviously we know that McCall is going to get into the PI game or else there wouldn’t be a book. Leder doesn’t overuse this device, and instead uses it to color in his character’s desires and skills. The fact that she’s a reluctant PI is core to what makes Kate McCall such a unique presence on the page. We want her to succeed in whatever she does, whether it’s solving her father’s murder or belting out a vampire love song.

Filling out the novel are a large assortment of eccentric characters in her apartment building and the people she meets on the case. Yet they’re not impossibly eccentric. Comedy works when there’s an element of truth to it. Make it too absurdist and it could lose some of its comedy bite. That’s not an issue here: characters are oddballs, one and all, but they’re absolutely realistic, not pawns in a comedic foil.

Though this book is put out on Leder’s own Laugh Riot Press, which promises “Funny Books,” Workman’s Complication isn’t an all-out comedy. It’s on the funny side of hardboiled, for sure, but it’s not a book full of punchlines. It is hugely entertaining and colorfully written, but the book definitely has the flavor of a detective novel rather than a story brimming with comedic hijinks. You’ll laugh, but you’ll also be racing through the book to see how she solves the case and what demented character she meets next. The novel is more of a black comedy that manages also to be suspenseful. It is, after all, a mystery, and Leder masterfully juggles all of these different elements. There’s a new surprise on virtually every page.

In the seven years I’ve been reading and reviewing books for SPR, I’d put Workman’s Complication in the top five. There is absolutely nothing suggesting this work is self-published. “Page turning” might be overused, but I couldn’t wait to get back to this book when I put it down. It’s funny, exciting, insightful, and inventive: the kind of book where you forget you’re reading. Get this one.”

“An honest-to-goodness charmer about a reluctant female detective trying to solve her father’s murder. You’ll fall in love with the whimsical, scrappy PI at the heart of this hilarious mystery. Highly recommended, especially for fans of Janet Evanovich.

Rule #1: Don’t do murder. It doesn’t pay, and somebody’s already dead. Murder leads to more murder. Maybe yours.

So begins a series of amusing guidelines written by New York private investigator Jimmy McCall. But by the time his daughter, 45-year-old Kate McCall reads them, Jimmy has died and left her McCall & Company, his PI firm.

Unfortunately, Kate wants no part of it. She’s a 45-year-old struggling actress whose life has been a carousel of hilariously odd professions including actor, dog walker, bagel-maker, house painter, dating service coordinator, exotic dancer and many others.

Despite the fact that she has also occasionally worked on her father’s cases, Kate seems determined that her PI license go to the grave with him. But when a man with a workman’s compensation issue offers her $200 per day to take his case, she suddenly has a change of heart (Kate: “I made much less than two hundred dollars a day walking dogs.”)

All the while, her father’s death is never far from her mind. Why was he murdered? Was it because he violated Rule #1? And if Kate were to actually investigate his death, would she not also be violating Rule #1?

In Kate McCall, Leder has created one of the most original PIs we’ve read in years. As you might have guessed, Kate’s acting skills come in handy during the course of her work (even if she can’t sing so well while wearing vampire teeth). Overall, Workman’s Complication is a gratifying and clever mystery that would be riveting even in the hands of a conventional writer. But the fact that Leder is such an exceptional humorist makes it required reading for those who appreciate levity in their fiction. You’ll be slayed (pun intended) by the funeral scene where Kate agrees to take her first gig, and Jimmy’s rules always kill (my personal favorite? Rule #3: never kiss a cop on the first date). By the time you’ve read Rule #4, you’ll be hooked.”

“It would be hard to argue that Carl Hiaasen didn’t pioneer a genre. Actually he pioneered a genre and a sub genre: comedy mysteries and Florida-based comedy mysteries. Some of my favorite writers have found success in his wake. Guys like Bill Fitzhugh, Lawrence Sanders and Laurence Shames have all found enthusiastic followings by raiding the ranks of readers like me: people who just can’t get enough Hiaasen. But, because the genre doesn’t have an army of writers that genres like romance or gritty police procedurals have, we can actually run out of new books to enjoy! That’s why I was so thrilled to have happened upon self-published author Rich Leder. Maybe I got lucky or maybe I’m just incurious, but if there is more of this stuff in the world of self-publishing, I’m going to have to get better at finding it.

I just finished reading McCall and Company: Workman’s Complication and I had a ball. Not only did Leder craft a page turner of a story, he peopled it with a great cast of characters and even caught me off guard with the “who” as in “done it.”

First, “McCall” is a woman; Kate McCall. Leder gets serious respect for his Tom Robbins-level gift for channeling a female. Then he surrounds her with not one cast of quirky characters but two. One is drawn from the residents of the NYC building Kate manages and the second is comprised of her (terrible) off-off-off-off Broadway theater group. And, not surprisingly, each well-crafted personality brings a specialty to her investigative efforts without which she would undoubtedly fail. Are they far fetched? Yeah, but Hiaasen devotees seem to have digested a glass eye-wearing, perfect smile-baring, former Florida governor turned swamp-living nature boy crime fighter without it repeating on them so, what’s it to ya?

I want to keep writing about this writer and this book, but I’m headed dangerously close to spoiler territory, so let me just say this: if you like your mysteries told with a healthy dose of belly laughs and an actual plot (!) you owe it to yourself to give Rich Leder a try. This was also my first Kindle book and I read it on my Android. Since finishing it, I keep wanting to reach for the phone to get more… so, I’m going to buy the second book in the McCall and Company series, Swollen Identity (the set up for which closes the first book), and get me some.”

“I have been looking for a new author to read and I feel like I just won the lottery. Move over James, Mickey, Robert and Sara, there’s a new detective mystery writer in town and his name is Rich Leder. Kate McCall is my kind of P.I. – no wait; she’s not a P.I. she’s an actress – smart, sexy and witty with a memorable cast of characters and just the right amount of guile to get into and out of some very unique situations. Rich Leder’s style is much to my liking. His sentence structure lends a writer’s voice that is intimately more conversational and incomparably more humorous than any other author I have read. OK, full disclosure – I have already bought and started the second book in the McCall & Company series.”

“I laughed out loud so many times while reading this book! It did remind me of Janet Evonavich's books only with more depth. Lots of interesting bits of information on various aspects of our culture. His descriptive characters are what really grabs you and keeps you engrossed in this book. I've already bought the second book and look forward to reading more by Rich Leder.”

“Workman’s Complication is one-third mystery, one-third comedy and one-third heart, which come together to make a book that is a whole lot of fun from start to finish. Kate McCall is first and foremost an actor, but when her father turns up murdered in a life insurance company elevator, she inherits his private investigations company and becomes a PI herself. As if finding her father’s murderer wasn’t enough of a case, she must also find out if a ballroom-dancing construction worker really fell off a piece of scaffolding, or if he’s faking it to milk millions out of his employer. To crack both the cases, Kate calls on the eclectic and crazy tenants of her apartment building and the animated, eccentric members of her drama troupe.

Mystery has never been a favorite genre of mine. I read one “Alex Cross” novel and it was so cold, impersonal, and needlessly raunchy that I felt like I needed a shower afterwards and never bothered looking into the genre again, so I was skeptical when I first picked this book up.

Thankfully, Kate McCall and Alex Cross couldn’t be more different. Kate is witty, clever, creative, a bit over the top, and incredibly personable. From the first page, she sounds like a real person that you might meet on the streets of New York. The characters that live in Kate’s apartment building and preform with her are equally entertaining and downright hilarious. A few of them are so much larger than life that they don’t sound like real people, but I enjoyed them so much that I really didn’t care. They’re a blast to read, believable or not.

The way Leder portrays the characters directly involved in the cases makes you really invest in the outcome. I really wanted Kate to discover that the construction worker was faking it because his boss is a wonderful guy (but I won’t tell you if she did or not :P). I really wanted Kate to find out who killed her father because she’s great and I wanted to see her triumph. Since I cared about the characters, it always felt like there was something more at stake than just finding answers.

Another thing that Leder does surprisingly well is make New York a vivid backdrop for the story. I’ve never been to New York City, but I’ve seen enough movies to know what it physically looks like. However, it has never been alive the way it is in Workman’s Complication. Leder has a knack for making the places Kate goes as important to the story as the characters. The places he picks are always perfect for the scenes that unfold and make them feel as three-dimensional as the characters. Whenever he describes a location, every word feels important and adds to the world around Kate. And not only the places, but the walk-on characters as well. People you only see for a few pages, or even a few paragraphs, feel fleshed out and make the scenes believable and real. It’s quite impressive and makes the book enjoyable on multiple levels.

I don’t want to say too much more, seeing as Workman’s Complication is a mystery, but I highly recommend it. Everything from the characters to the comedy to the writing and story are so enjoyable that, even if you’re new to mystery novels, there’s something that you’re bound to enjoy.”

“I am excited to present to you a great book called Workman’s Complication by Rich Leder. It is an entertaining mystery about an off-off-off-off Broadway actress who inherits a P.I. business from her father after he is murdered. Kate gets in way over her head with two cases–the investigation into who killed her father and an investigation into a worker’s compensation claim. Kate is a Stephanie Plum-type character, running into all sorts of trouble, but she’s older and less sassy.

I appreciated that Kate was older; it was refreshing to see a middle-aged character who kicked butt. Also, the dynamics between her and her adult son were on-target and fun to watch. Kate is a well-developed character. She doesn’t always make the best decision, but she does it with the best of intentions.

The rest of the cast of characters are great, too. They are quirky and amusing. Each contributes to the story in his or her own way. Because the characters are all so different, it is easy to keep track of who is who. Sometimes the secondary characters blend together because they are flat or unremarkable. That is definitely not the case in this book.

The writing itself is excellent. I only found one spelling error in the entire book. The writing flows well, making it a quick and easy read.

There were a few things about the book that I found problematic. First, Kate often knew things she couldn’t possibly know. For example, when meeting the detectives for the first time, she states exactly how old each is. Unless she stopped the interrogation to ask them their ages, I don’t see how she could have known this. As far as I know, she had no psychic abilities. Second, there was a scene in which Kate thought, “that implicated me in a ten million dollar insurance fraud and possibly tied me to a murder or two.” The first part of this statement is correct, but the second part is not because it refers to the other case that she was not investigating at that moment. The two cases got confused. Third (and this is the biggest one in my opinion), Kate overlooked a major way her client could have fought the case against Curry. She chalks it up as another sign her client is going to get screwed over, when she could have used that information to nail him to the wall.

These few issues were not enough to sway my opinion of the book. I thought it was a great story. I would read more by this author. I recommend Workman’s Complication to readers who like mysteries solved by people who shouldn’t be sticking their nose in something that should be handled by the police. This is one of those books that makes you cheer for the underdogs.”

“When off-Broadway actress Kate McCall's P.I. father is brutally murdered, she uses her P.I. license he made her get so she could help him with his business when the acting trade fell off, to track down his killer. She uses her acting skills to get into the places she needs to gather information, but her investigation is fraught with mistakes. It’s a comedy of errors. But she stumbles through and makes headway in the case. She also follows up on one other of his cases, when she finds out that's what he was working on when he was killed. It becomes a really dangerous investigation, and thank goodness she has Fu, her Asian plumber and former hit man to help protect her. It's a fun read with lots of laughs, a cast of crazy characters and a little romance thrown in for good measure. If you’re looking for a romp, this will fit the bill. I’m sorry now that I waited so long to read it. Loved it. Get your copy and start laughing now. ~Review by Sandy Penny, Founder of SweetMysteryBooks.com”

“Kate McCall is an actress; at least that’s what she keeps telling us. So, when her father, Jimmy, is murdered, she inherits his PI business and ‘stuff.’ That stuff is in a box that includes his closed files, his open files, his urn, and his gun. Kate has actually held many jobs, one of which was helping her father every now and again with his caseload, so she already has her PI license. She can step right in and work the open cases – if she wants to. Instead, she brings the box with her father’s stuff back to her apartment building where she asks Fu, the maintenance man, to dig an adequate sized hole and invites (mandatory attendance) the tenants to the backyard for a wake (he was Irish after all). The residents weigh in one by one and tell Kate she needs to avenge her father’s death. But, she’s an actress! She even has a leading role with The Schmidt and Parker Players as Farina LeBleu, a Cajun Vampire. But, she finally relents and agrees to take a look at the cases especially since she now knows the police also want them. First, she’ll need to hold the police off long enough to investigate, beginning with the question of which case may have caused someone to murder her father.

I fell in love with the personality of Kate, her very quirky tenants, and her acting troupe. This is the first in the McCall & Company series. As such, the personality of Jimmy comes through only by what you read in his will and Kate’s remembrance of him. Even though this is a humorous novel, the author shows Kate as compassionate as she mourns for her father when she comes across places and things that remind her of him. There were many characters, but each one was so unique that it was easy to remember them. It could be considered a cozy mystery, except it is a bit more graphic than most cozies.”