About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

DEATH BY PANTYHOSE
by Laura Levine
Kensington, June 2007
244 pages
$22.00
ISBN: 0758207859


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Freelance writer Jaine Austen is back in Laura Levine's sixth series installment, following last year's THE PMS MURDER. These lighthearted mysteries are great for a quick afternoon of entertaining reading.

Jaine is struggling to make a living in her freelance writing job and to renew her romance with hunky banker Andrew Ferguson, and has just agreed to write jokes for Dorcas MacKenzie, a stand-up comic who throws her pantyhose into the audience as a punch line. Not only is Dorcas's act a bomb, she is also heckled by Vic, a gorgeous fellow comic who is equally good on stage and in the sack.

Unfortunately Vic loves performing in both venues. He gets in bed with a sexy waitress, a pretty new lover, and a sweet girlfriend while professing his undying love for each. Worse, he is two-timing his aging agent. Pretty soon Vic has an enemy's list a mile long, and when he needles Dorcas one time too many, she assaults him at a club's open-mike night.

Naturally when Vic is murdered with Dorcas's pantyhose and that same Dorcas is standing over his dead body, the police arrest . . . Dorcas. They figure it's an open-and-shut case, although Jaine figures no killer can be that dumb – even Dorcas. But when Jaine jumps to her client's aid and sets out to find the real culprit, she is distracted by one dating disaster after another with Andrew – and she may not see the dark side of comedy until she faces the business end of a gun and a cold, deadly grin.

This installment is another of Levine's successes at crafting a well-designed murder mystery ensconced in the folds of a humor-filled story. One of the things I like most about this series is that its playful wit and cozy atmosphere serve as both catalyst and cushion for its darker underlying themes.

Levine also has a knack for surrounding her sassy sleuth with a variety of well-drawn and memorable characters – like Jaine's parents, who live in a retirement community in Florida and communicate with Jaine via email about their latest adventures, this time involving a gravy-stained, lucky Hawaiian shirt.

DEATH BY PANTYHOSE delves into the dark side of Hollywood's comedy circuit, where backstabbing and questionable ethics are not the exception but the rule, and sleazy, smoke-filled venues are the only option for up-and-comers looking to make it big. As Jaine digs deeper into the lives of her suspects, the danger to her – as well as to Dorcas's fate – escalates.

Jaine Austen is a likeable heroine, smart but not overly so, determined, and still thoroughly human, complete with some rather endearing insecurities and foibles – like her love for food and her pampered cat, Prozac, and her penchant for persisting until she finds the truth, usually by stumbling onto it. Her well-meaning intentions have a way of getting her into sticky situations which are either laugh out-loud funny or gasp out-loud frightening, but though Jaine has a couple of close scrapes, there's always the assurance that some stroke of luck will help get her out of the jam and uncover the truth.

Reviewed by J. B. Thompson, August 2007

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]