SWITCHEROO

Investigators Fran and Ken Stein start out with a case that should be right up their alley and end up way out in left field.

The pair technically have no parents, having been created in a lab by two brilliant but eccentric scientists who desperately wanted offspring only to disappear from their lives several years later, leaving them in the care of a radio newscaster they know as Aunt Margie. So it’s no coincidence that Fran and Ken have made a specialty of helping adoptees reconnect with their birth families. Austin Cobb, who’s on the autism spectrum, doesn’t exactly want to reconnect with his birth parents; instead, he wants Fran and Ken to carry out the very specific mission of finding out whether they gave him up because of his autism. But Austin’s adoption is shrouded in mystery, and even Fran’s long-established connections in the child welfare world can’t give her a line on who Austin’s parents were, much less why they surrendered him. The case gets curiouser and curiouser as Fran finds that a woman who might have been Austin’s mother was murdered and her husband disappeared. Add Fran and Ken’s parents’ eternal nemesis, Malcolm X. Mitchell, to the mix, and you have the kind of freewheeling nightmare only Copperman could concoct. It’s not clear whether it’s a family saga, a science-fiction tale, a murder mystery, or a love story. Even Fran and her maybe-boyfriend, NYPD Det. Richard Mankiewicz, are unclear about the latter.

However you categorize this story, it’s 100% Copperman and 100% hilarious.