There's a new diva detective on the block...meet sassy Cece Caruso! Cece is West Hollywood cool with the street smarts of a New Jersey Stephanie Plum. In I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason Susan Kandel has crafted a new heroine that is funny, smart and with a panache for vintage clothes.

By trade Cece is a biographer of mystery writers. In I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason, her latest assignment is a book about the life of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of the dashing, never-loose-a-case attorney Perry Mason. Cece's got the Perry Mason stuff down but capturing the essence of Gardner eludes her. In her research Cece discovers a misfiled letter written in 1958 that could help her uncover Gardner's true personality.

Maintaining that he was wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife, Joseph Albacco wrote the letter to Gardner pleading for help to prove his innocence. Gardner never took the case. Why? Ah ha! Here is what Cece has been looking for - stories that will help her discover the real Erle Stanley Gardner.

What starts out as a self-serving visit to Albacco in prison leads to Cece's entrée as an amateur sleuth. The prison priest convinces Cece that she is Albacco's last chance to find and tell the truth. Time is ticking. A parole hearing is less than three weeks off. There might not be another opportunity. In Perry Mason-like style, Cece reluctantly agrees to take the case. "Me the girl in the silver Camry, I'd been lured by the possibility of answering someone's prayers."

Part of Cece's charm is that she doesn't take herself seriously. Her humor is delightful. I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. Cece on why vintage clothes only come in sizes four and six: "Throughout history, voluptuous girls like myself tended to be ravished by impatient mates, their dresses shed in the heat of passion while our petite counterparts, being inherently less desirable, had ample time to hang up their garments, neatly thus preserving them for posterity on eBay."

Interwoven throughout the novel is the tale of Ventura (where Gardner practiced law and wrote the Perry Mason mysteries) from the start of the twentieth century to today. Cece's funky lifestyle in West Hollywood and her passion for vintage clothing adds surreal elements that complement combining the past with the present. The plot has it share of roller coaster twists and turns. Include a glamorous, aging movie star with fabulous clothes, her handsome son with a troubled past, a sexy past lover who is a police detective and you've got a fun new woman detective series...one with style and attitude.

Susan Kandel has a "vintage" Hollywood hit with Cece Caruso.