A professional grad student, an engineering consultant, and a former Major League pitcher enter the wine cellar of a trendy bistro on New Year’s Eve, but this is no joke: One leaves on a stretcher, one is carried out in a body bag, and one speeds off in a stolen car. The book introduces an odd pair of amateur sleuths, Cressida Fortune and Don Mandarino, who are often mistaken for a couple, but, as Cress likes to explain, “One of us is a lesbian.”

Elgin Crofft is the pen-name of a reclusive writer who lives outside of Baltimore, Maryland, in a bird sanctuary surrounded by Baltimore Orioles of the feathered variety. Unlike the narrator of In a Lot of Trouble, Elgin has never been a professional athlete--but was once mistaken for a German tennis player by a group of elderly Brits at England’s second-best-known grass court tournament. However, like the character Cressida Fortune, Elgin is a scholar, albeit one with a PhD and a wide range of publications, including, most recently, a book on sports films.

"Elgin Crofft brings a fiendishly witty new voice to the genre of detective Fiction.” –K Edgington