Back in March, I introduced you to Iris Anderson, 15 year old girl sleuth living on the Lower East Side in NYC. In that first novel, we learned that her mother had inexplicably committed suicide. Her death brought changes in live of Iris and her dad, a vet who lost his leg in Pearl Harbor. The Girl is Trouble opens just a few weeks after The Girl is Murder ended. The first anniversary of Pearl Harbor is approaching, Iris is still attending PS 110, and hanging around with and confiding in her best friend Pearl. The Rainbows, the school badies, are still mad at Iris for events that occurred in the first novel, including Benny, Iris's crush. In other words, Iris's life is status qua at the moment.
But then, all that changes. First, Iris is asked to investigate a series of anti-Semitic notes being left in the lockers of the students who belong to the Jewish Student Federation. Then, she finds a strange man outside her house after school one day who wants her to tell her private detective Pop that Stefan says hello. And Pop is definitely upset when she gives him the message. Lastly, when Pop accidentally leaves his safe open, Iris goes snooping and finds two sets of photographs. The first set are random, candid pictures of her taken from a distance, the second set are of her mother in the hotel room at the White Swan on East 86th Street where she supposedly committed suicide - only the photos don't look like a suicide, they like more like a murder.