Christine Andersen was a nice girl from a small town in Minnesota, but with looks like hers, she was bound to attract trouble. At 19, Christine goes to New York to work as a secretary, where she has her first adventure in Headlong For Murder.

In Blondes Don't Cry (Christine's motto), she goes to Washington during World War II to take a government job and wait for her fiance, Tony Barron, to get home from the Pacific. In the midst of a wartime housing shortage, Christine manages to snag an apartment all to herself. The only drawback to the place is the body of another blonde stuffed into the dumbwaiter.

Merlda Mace was the pen name of Madeleine McCoy, an author about whom very little is known. She wrote three mysteries in the 1940s, two of them featuring Christine Andersen, but that seems to be all. Headlong For Murder, the first book, and Blondes Don't Cry aren't the greatest entries into the detective genre, but Christine is very likeable, and I'm a fan. ( )