Who would have thought that the teenage pop star, Heather Mills, would find herself as an assistant resident advisor at New York College? Well that's exactly what happens when her mother empties her bank account and runs off to Brazil with her faithful manager in tow. Next thing she knows, Heather's career tanks and she is forced to come up with a plan B. Too add insult to injury, Heather gets dumped by her fellow teenage pop star boyfriend, Jordan, and winds up homeless, penniless and in need of a job.

When Jordan's private detective brother, Cooper, comes to the rescue and offers Heather a room in exchange for some light bookkeeping, Heather is convinced that things are looking up. With New York College picking up the tab, Heather embarks on her new career as an assistant resident advisor filled with naïve freshman girls, neurotic student workers and a flamboyant dining hall cashier who insists on calling all of the students movie stars. What she didn't factor into the equation were two freshman girls in her residence hall dying her first week on the job.

When Detective Canavan pronounces the girls' deaths just an unfortunate silly freshman prank gone awry, Heather's wheels start turning and her detective radar is activated. Luckily for her, she just so happens to be bunking with the hottest private detective in New York City. Too bad the picture that comes to mind when he thinks of her is not a sexy blond bombshell but rather a Calamity Jane. How is she going to prove to everyone that these deaths were no accidents while at the same time land the man of her dreams? Heather must now put away her bubblegum and tight blue jeans from her former teenage pop star life and trade them in for a cloak and dagger if she wants to become the Nancy Drew of Fischer Hall and solve this mystery.

The prolific Meg Cabot's debut mystery novel delivers the perfect balance of humor, romance and intrigue. Her witty repartee makes the reader laugh out loud, while her gift of gab makes her writing flow. Her in-depth character development enables the reader to feel sympathy for the criminal, while at the same time feel compassion for the victim. Never a disappointment, Cabot's new crime series is a welcome addition with many twists and turns yet to be solved.

Book Summary

HEATHER WELLS ROCKS!

Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop- idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two -- and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls . . . and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen -- not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives -- even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective!

But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong . . .