The Case Of The Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend

Praise for Mabel Maney’s Nancy Clue Mysteries!

“Maney has penned a mystery with tongue-in-cheek homo-erotic hilarity that’s simultaneously fun, nostalgic, and completely contemporary.”—Los Angeles Reader

“In a gem of a book-length parody, the author faithfully hews to the narrative and plotting style of juvenile series fiction, her remarkably straight face making the goings on all the funnier. I loved this book …”—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

“Maney, who evidently grew up bent in a straighter-than-thou environment, has had a field day with our conventions. Wittily, subversively, she has exposed the underbelly of America: it’s softly rounded, and warm.”—Toronto Globe and Mail

“Utter kitsch, done with class and distinction. Mabel tools the pages like an expert, in the process bringing up a lot of dialogue about the role of lesbianism in the ‘gay’ 90s, albeit subtly.”—Your Flesh Magazine

“Girl-detective fiction fashioned with a gusto and much self-parody … Maney delivers a strange tale of missing nuns, lesbian romance and much hapless do-gooding detective work. Fun at its most Sapphic, this is one mystery that you should get to the bottom of!”—The Pink Paper

“Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend is definitely a hoot; you’ll laugh until your dress gets mussed … Maney knows ‘50s America like she majored in Ozzie and Harriet.”—Lambda Book Report

“The sequel to The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse is another hoot, a lampooning of girls’ fiction of the past full of hapless, do-gooding detectives with ‘keen sleuthing abilities, up-to-the-minute fashion sense, and gracious finishing-school manners.’ With a honey like Cherry, who is always careful to keep an ample supply of freshly starched, white linen handkerchiefs in her seasonally appropriate handbag, we know Nancy can’t miss.” —Booklist

Nancy swiftly and expertly roped Cherry in.

MABEL MANEY was born at All Saint’s Hospital in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Marge Muldoon Maney, a former beauty queen whose titles include Miss Muskie Queen 1949 and Miss Cheese Log 1951, and Milton Maney, a traveling footwear salesman specializing in sensible shoes.

After her parents were lost at sea, Mabel’s spinster aunt, Miss Maude Maney, a successful women’s undergarments buyer for a local department store, enrolled Mabel at St. Agatha’s School for Girls in nearby Bear Lake, where she excelled in Conversational Skills and Table Manners. After an idyllic four years spent in the highest academic pursuits, Mabel was expelled for behavior too unpleasant to mention here.

Mabel enjoyed a short stint at the Appleton Home for Wayward Girls, after which she made her way west where she found employment in the film industry, training miniature collies to jump through hoops. Following many years devoted to canine education, Mabel retired to San Francisco, where she now resides.

Her key to success? “Never mix plaids with stripes!”

Mabel Maney is the author of The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend, and Nancy Clue and the Hardly Boys in A Ghost in the Closet (Cleis Press). Her short stories have appeared in Best American Mystery Stories (Houghton Mifflin) and San Francisco Thrillers (Chronicle Books). Her new girl spy adventure series is forthcoming from Avon.

Maney’s installation art and handmade books, self-published under the World O’Girls Books imprint, have earned her fellowships from the San Francisco Foundation and San Francisco State University, where she received her MFA in 1991. Her art has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States. Artspace wrote of her handmade World O’Girls edition of The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse: “In Maney’s refigured narrative, gay heroine Cherry Ames moves unhampered through a world populated by lesbian nuns and adventuresses, even engaging in a one-nighter with Nancy Drew. Entertainment aside, by appropriating and redefining the sexual orientation and cultural limits placed upon her fictional female characters, Maney provides a powerful reminder of the exclusionary nature of the ruling (in this case, straight) culture, with its power to define specific roles and acts as ‘natural’ while denying or marginalizing others.”

Mabel Maney

www.spice-books.co.uk

For Miss Lillian Bee of the Milwaukee Bees, and for M. P. K.

Special thanks to the nurses of Cleis Press—Deborah Barkun, Leasa Burton, Frédérique Delacoste, Maura Farrell, Lisa Frank, Pete Ivey, and Felice Newman—for their keen editing abilities, unflagging good humor, and eternal patience.

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

1 A Maddening Mishap

2 To the Rescue!

3 Oops!

4 Pocatello Bound

5 That Special Something

6 A Chance Encounter

7 Mysterious Strangers

8 An Important Assignment

9 A Horrible Mix-up!

10 What a Coincidence!

11 “Adieu, Idaho”

12 Shocking News

13 A Cheery Hello

14 A Sudden Crash