Aggie Blake

"Detective Agatha Blake, LAPD. I'm gonna need to ask you a few questions." —Aggie Blake's essential catch phrase.

Agatha 'Aggie' Blake is an LAPD Homicide Detective. Katherine 'Katie' Lane is a teenage foster child. They Fight Crime.

Aggie, a 27-year-old detective, and her interns, Dexter Smalls and Lenny Little, are investigating the murder of a hotel lounge singer. They soon meet Katie Lane, the teenage daughter of the victim, who had been placed into foster care years before. For the Evulz, Smalls and Little arrange for Katie to live with Aggie, an arrangement that both girls despise. With the help of friends CJ (the chief medical examiner), Lexy (the forensic entomologist), and Ace (the forensic toxocologist, and Aggie's love interest), they must catch the killer.

Aggie Blake provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Aggie and Katie
• Almost Kiss: Between Katie and her crush in the second book
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Lexy (blonde), Aggie (brunette), and CJ (redhead)
• Can't Hold His Liquor: According to Aggie, Smalls can't.
• A Day in the Limelight: The third book in the series centers around Smalls and Little, who are forced to solve a crime alone when Aggie and Katie are bedridden with the flu.
• Creepy Child: Katie is a very mild example of this. Salem, the little girl that the LAPD harbors after her family is murdered, is a much straighter example. Salem's also the one who killed her family.
• Deadpan Snarker: All of the main characters, with the exception of Lexy.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Hero: Aggie
  • The Lancer: CJ
  • The Big Guy: Smalls and Ace
  • The Smart Guy: Lexy and Little
  • Kid Appeal Character: Katie
• Headbutting Heroes: Aggie and Katie
• Hideous Hangover Cure: CJ's pickle juice method. Aggie chooses this method over being buried up to her neck in moist river mud.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Aggie's being humiliated by her interns in front of her boyfriend. She turns to vodka.
  • Played for Laughs in the second book with this exerpt:

Katie walks into the station and flops her backpack on the floor by my desk. "I need a freaking drink." She says. "You're 14. Drinking is illegal." I say, not looking up at her. "Fine. I need a freaking cookie." She revises. "Open." I say, and turn around before popping a cookie into her open mouth. "Why the sudden need for a sugar binge?" I ask.

• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Little and Smalls give this spiel to Aggie's boyfriend over a game of pool.
  • Little and Smalls do this yet again when Katie has a study date with a guy from school.
• Little Miss Badass: Katie, who kneecaps Aggie's shooter in the last chapter of the first book, hand cuffs, and does all this without even blinking before returning to make sure Aggie is okay.
• Little Miss Snarker: Katie
• Meaningful Name: Katie breaks Salem's down for us.

"Her name is Salem. Salem had witches. What rhymes with witches? What is she? This is logical proof that that little girl is a bi--"

• Murder the Hypotenuse: The adoptive father of one of the victims killed the woman his daughter's lover was seeing in hopes that the man she was seeing would keep seeing his daughter. When that failed, he planned to kill the man, but accidentally confronted his daughter instead.
• My Beloved Smother: Aggie's mother smothers both Aggie and Katie, much to their dismay.
• Parental Abandonment: One of the things in Katie and Aggie's backstory that makes them so alike. Katie was abandoned by her mom and never met her dad, and was shipped back and forth between foster homes. Aggie's parents broke apart after the death of her brother, and her mom left her with her alcoholic father.
• Self-Made Orphan: Salem
• Those Two Guys: Smalls and Little