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Jaine Austen is a writer and part-time private investigator in California. One day as she is looking at her diminishing checkbook, she gets a phone call from Patti Marshall, the nastiest bully in high school. Patti wants Jaine to pen the perfect wedding vows for her wedding. Though she has nothing but bad memories of Patti, the large paycheck promised makes Jaine agree to the job, even though Patti wants her vows to be a cross between Romeo and Juliet and a Friends episode with a happy ending. When she meets Patti, Jaine sees that she is still the spoiled, nasty, horrible person she was in school, but a paycheck is a paycheck and Jaine gets to writing, again and again. The more Jaine sticks around Patti, the more she sees that there is no one involved in the over-done wedding who is happy except the bride and groom. The parents of the groom, a boy that Jaine knew from high school too, isn't at all happy that their son divorced his first wife just to marry Patti, and the ex-wife isn't exactly delighted either. Patti, the worst Bridezilla in the world, has made everyone involved, from the wedding guests to the caterer, all miserable. On the day of the wedding, right in the middle of the vows, Patti makes a dramatic flourish and falls to her death from a balcony with a loose railing. The police hold the ex-wife of the groom right away and because Jaine also knew her from high school and believes that she wasn't the type to kill anyone, Jaine promises to use her skills as a part-time PI find the real killer. From the first moment when we can read what Jaine's cat is thinking, we know that KILLING BRIDEZILLA will be a fun romp with little connection to reality. Jaine's private investigator's talents consist of having the gumption to ask embarrassing questions of he lays eyes one. Jaine may not have much in the way of PI smarts, but she sure does have a knack of making herself the center of everyone's attention, whether she's setting fire to an old stalker's hairpiece or falling over an elderly gentleman she fell over many high school moons ago. From Jaine's first email from her madcap parents - who moved to Florida to permit the mother to be closer to her beloved Home Shopping Network - to Jane's constant battle with every delicious calorie-laden treat in her vicinity, we get to see the humor in her life and laugh along with her. For a murder mystery filled with laughs with a surprising ending, KILLING BRIDEZILLA is a totally light look at a murder everyone wants to happen. This is the first Jaine Austen mystery I've read and I look forward to finding all the others for a good laugh.
Reviewed by A.L. Katz, June 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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