Paige Turner isn’t my given name, you should know. (What decent, self-respecting parents would burden a daughter with a ridiculous moniker like that?) And it isn’t my pen name, either. (I’ve had some stupid ideas in my life, but that wasn’t one of them.) What it is, is my married name, and I have only my late husband, Bob Turner, to thank-or should I say blame?-for it.

My best friend, Abby Moscowitz-the gorgeous, oversexed, opinionated beatnik artist who lives right across the hall from me-says I should change my name altogether. “It’s a joke!” she keeps insisting. “When people hear it, they laugh, you dig? You’ll never be taken seriously-especially in the publishing industry. You need a smart and sassy name. Something that will grab people’s attention without giving them the giggles.”

Abby’s right, I know-but I don’t care. Paige Turner I am, and Paige Turner I’m going to stay (unless my divorced, thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend, Detective Sergeant Dan Street, ever offers me his last name-which at this point in our troubled relationship seems a distinct impossibility). I was very much in love with Bob Turner, you see, and-though we were married for only one blissful month before he was sent off to die in a blast of machine gun bullets in a dirt trench in North Korea-I will always keep him safe in my heart. And I will always honor his name… no matter how silly mine became because of it.

Dan isn’t jealous about this, in case you’re wondering. Quite the opposite. As the staunchest, most resolute homicide detective in the entire NYPD, he’s really proud of me for sticking to my guns. Dan values loyalty and stamina above all other character traits, and openly praises me for keeping my married name in the face of constant ridicule (Mike and Mario waste more energy cracking Paige Turner jokes than they do watching for the hands of the office clock to land on lunchtime). It’s lucky for me that Dan is seduced by my small reserve of faithfulness and fortitude, because when it comes to his next most highly valued character trait, I come up shorter than bobby socks on a giraffe.