My Life is Murder

Retired detective Alexa Crowe is intent on one goal: fixing her professional-grade, German bread maker. Then her former boss, Kieran, contacts her for help on an unsolved case: a successful businesswoman who plunged to her death from the 19th-floor balcony of a male escort’s apartment. Try as she might to resist, Alexa begins to investigate, assisted by young data analyst Madison.

Kieran brings Alexa another cold case: a family man named Alan Gillespie shot dead in a motel room, with the windows and door locked from the inside and the security chain in place. As Madison digs into Gillespie’s past, she uncovers a business connection to Nikki Malone, a crook Alexa knows from her undercover work five years ago. Nikki has since gone straight, but Alexa has her doubts.

When Hugh Miller, the CFO of a hospitality empire, dies on a cycling ride with friends, the coroner rules it death by misadventure. But Kieran suspects the involvement of Hugh’s boss, hard-driving entrepreneur Roger Simms, and asks Alexa to look into it.

Culinary student Ivan Zhang was found dead in the school’s kitchen after slipping on oil and smacking his head. But Kieran considers the scene suspicious—where did the oil come from, when the dish Ivan was preparing didn’t call for it? It might all boil down to Ivan’s archrival, Ling, the last person to see him alive. Alexa goes undercover to the cooking class to smoke out the killer.

A year ago, beautiful young PR assistant Christina Cortez was killed in a hit-and-run by a drunk driver who turned herself in a few days later. It seems like a tragic—but closed—case. But who sent Christina the mysterious message that prompted her to be at that fatal spot in the first place? Alexa investigates Christina’s boss, glamourous social-media queen Morgana Finch, for answers.

When a true-crime podcast blames Kieran for the lack of progress on an investigation into the killing of a young gay man, who was found with a cult-like symbol on his forehead, Alexa is determined to help Kieran out. It soon becomes clear that not only does the podcaster want to remain anonymous, but that he or she knows intimate details about the victim.

Alexa revisits better days—or at least younger ones—after her beloved high-school teacher is crushed to death by a boat rack. Acting on Kieran’s hunch that the rack didn’t collapse by accident, Alexa looks into Miranda Lee, the new principal—who also happens to be her old classmate and frenemy.

While jogging one morning, Alexa collapses on the bridge named in honor of her late husband. As she confronts her mortality, Kieran takes the opportunity to hand her the case of Patrick Mandel, a gambling addict found buried in an already occupied grave. Alexa investigates the victim’s girlfriend—who is suspiciously a funeral director.

When Kieran presents Alexa with another unsolved murder—a nurse stabbed in the back a week after proposing to his girlfriend—Alexa declines until Kieran mentions the involvement of clairvoyant Chloe Angel, who knows details about the case not released to the public. Ever the skeptic, Alexa is determined find the killer and prove that Chloe is a phony.

As Alexa’s birthday approaches, Kieran gives her an early present: the case of a plastic surgeon obsessed with getting her own cosmetic procedures, who died after self-administering an anti-wrinkle drug she developed. Alexa questions the husband-and-wife team that own the clinic where the victim worked.