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Juliet Applebaum was once a high powered lawyer, a public defender who worked fourteen hours a day. But since her two children were born, she has been a stay-at-home mom. She has more freedom than most because her screenplay-writing husband is frequently available for baby-watching chores. And Juliet, while loving her children, needs more intellectual stimulation. As a result she has stumbled into several murders. In this, the third in the series, she is taking advantage of a gift from her husband of a set of training sessions at a Hollywood gym. She chooses not to consider this an insulting gift. Her personal trainer, Bobby Katz, is found dead, shot, presumably a suicide. But Juliet has trouble believing that he killed himself and so does his fiancÈ Betsy, a recovering drug addict. Betsy asks Juliet to nose around and see if she can discover anything. Juliet goes to her old buddy investigator Al who. she has just discovered, is setting himself up as a private investigator and would like Juliet to join him in his business. The first thing they discover is that Bobby was adopted and he had just found this out. There are no coincidences, says Al, and so the two of them trace the birth mother and father. This is an undemanding highly enjoyable summer read. Watching Juliet rush about, I sat in my recliner and enjoyed the protection of air conditioning. It was just a great deal of fun to meet these characters and see where this story was likely to go. Since we never met Bobby, I wasnít especially concerned over who had killed him although when Juliet was threatened there was greater distress. The characters are all very nice very pleasant people, even the one who turns out to be a murderer. Juliet is carefully drawn and her voice, self-deprecatory and amused at the world, is an enjoyable one. The rest of the characters, while agreeable tend to be two-dimensional. I like that fact that Juliet has to be concerned about her preschool children. She just doesnít toss them at a baby sitter and take off. Many times one or both join her in her sleuthing activities. At other times her husband can be prevailed upon to care for them. But they are an integral part of her life. And just as we thought this was all lighthearted and unexacting we discover some very serious sentiments. Juliet comes up against the implicit and usually unspoken attitude toward Jews. One woman simply assumes that being Jewish is not desirable. Others imply the same feeling. And so this lighthearted romp through Hollywood forces us to think a bit about life and how we view the world. And that is a nice added dimension.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, June 2002
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