Cosin, Elizabeth M., (Zen and the Art of Murder [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 1998] 978-0312193768 [pb, St. Martin’s/Minotaur, 1999] 978-0312969486 [“Zen” Moses is having a rough time: her cat just died, she’s facing an IRS audit, and she is a survivor of lung cancer. Her life gets more complicated when she walks into her favorite Santa Monica bar and finds the body of her cousin, Danny, wrapped around a beer keg. Danny was supposed to have died 12 years earlier in a mass cult suicide. While investigating her cousin’s “second” death, Zen is also hired for a high-paying job to find the long-lost father of a famous TV talk-show host. Zen soon discovers that the two cases are dangerously intertwined, involving the mob, dirty money, and a hitman tracking her every move. [Google/AI]
United States · Fiction author
Elizabeth M. Cosin
Elizabeth M. Cosin (birth est.1964, possibly Los Angeles where she now resides) - a former journalist and sportswriter who transitioned into writing for television and fiction. She is a survivor of lung cancer and, like her protagonist, lives with only one lung—an experience she has spoken about to address the realism of her character’s active lifestyle. Her protagonist, Zen (Zenaria) Moses. is described as a Jewish girl and a cigar-smoking private investigator based in Los Angeles, and very much in the tough,“hard-boiled” style of other fictional female detectives, as in the writings of Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky [see her listing in this Bibliography]. After her second novel, she transitioned primarily into writing and producing for television.
Cosin, Elizabeth M., (Zen and the City of Angels [hc, Minotaur Books, 1999] 978-0312206116 [mass mkt pb. Minotaur Books, 2000] 978-0312974466 [In the madness of L.A., Zen Moses is a risk-taking P.I. who has already fought for her life and her sanity-so what’s wrong with doing a little favor for a friend? The friend is Jim Gray, a trusted attorney, who needs her to find a missing dog. But this simple case leads Zen to a dead man with no face, the trail of a vanished dealmaker, and the hospital room where Gray is fighting for his life. Suddenly the suspect in a murder-and an unwitting participant in a woman’s violent unraveling-Zen finds herself in a tight spot. And it may be too late when she finally uncovers the truth: that in the city of angels, she’s been handpicked by some very powerful people-for a long hard fall down to hell. [Amazon]