Ayelet Waldman
berkley PRIME CRIME
320 pages
Murder Plays House
Juliet Applebaum is a public defender turned stay-at-home mom's and a "highly likable sleuth" (Judith Kelman). Now in Murder Plays House, with a new arrival on the way, the Applebaum household is bursting at the seams. And Juliet is balancing clue-chasing and diaper-changing with a new task: house-hunting…
PRAISE FOR MURDER PLAYS HOUSE
"An underlying theme concerns the extraordinary lengths to which people go to look beautiful, and the great weight put on physical appearance in determining success in Hollywood. The suspense builds slowly—it takes almost the full length of the book before a motive for the vicious killing becomes clear—but what a motive, what a resolution and how clever of Juliet to figure everything out."
— Publisher's Weekly
"Juliet Applebaum, public defender turned stay-at-home-mom and private investigator, is pregnant with her third child. The family apartment is suddenly too small, so she is looking for an affordable house. Her friend, Kat, a reluctant real-estate agent, offers to show her some homes, and the one that she really loves comes complete with a dead body in the guesthouse. Since her detective agency has no business, she decides to find the killer, hoping that it will give her a better chance to buy the house. The investigation takes her from the cut-throat real-estate business to the equally harsh entertainment world, where has-been sitcom stars will do anything to get work. As always, Waldman uses humor to portray the Los Angeles scene while making some serious points about what is really important in life. This thoroughly modern cozy will be popular."
— Booklist
HOME PAGE: Author photo by Reenie Raschke. Big Barda illustration by Clarkent78. Photo of Pat Conroy by David G. Spielman.