Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Dallas Public Library | PBK Waldman, A. Murder | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
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...
Author Notes
Ayelet Waldman was born on December 11, 1964. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1986 and from Harvard Law School in 1991. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked at a New York law firm and as a federal public defender in California. She is the author of the Mommy-Track Mysteries series, Daughter's Keeper, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Red Hook Road. In her essay Motherlove, which was published in Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write about Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves, Waldman admitted that she loves her husband more than her children. Her book Bad Mother was written as a result of the negative reaction to her essay. She and Michael Chabon are co-editors of, Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Waldman's fifth well-plotted Mommy-Track mystery (after 2003's Death Gets a Time-Out), PI and former public defender Juliet Applebaum, with another baby on the way, needs a new home almost as badly as she and her partner in her PI business, Al Hockey, need a new case. When in doubt, shop, so Juliet goes house hunting. One place she looks at really stands out-the one with the body in the bath. It seems a solution is at hand to both problems: if Juliet and Al can solve the murder, then Juliet and her family can buy the house. But who would kill a washed-up, bit-part actress? The deeper Juliet and Al dig, the more motives they find for the victim to have murdered someone herself. Juliet is a wonderful invention, warm, loving and sympathetic to those in need, but unintimidated by the L.A. entertainment industry she must enter to search for clues. 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. Agent, Mary Evans. (July 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Food for thought from a defense attorney turned mommy turned private eye in her spare time (Death Takes a Time-Out, 2003, etc.). Juliet Applebaum interrupts her third pregnancy snacking (Krispy Kremes and root-beer floats) to look for a bigger house for her SF screenwriter husband Peter and their expanding brood. Unfortunately, her dream house comes with the emaciated corpse of former actress Alicia Felix in the bathtub. Alicia's gay designer brother decides to hold off selling the house, but Juliet makes him an offer he can't refuse: She and her sleuthing partner Al Hockey will figure out who killed big sis if she gets first dibs when the house comes back on the market. Suspicion falls on the designer's lover Farzad, then on an actress who stole Alicia's improv character, renamed it Bingie McPurge, and turned it into a TV success. But Juliet's snooping stops for frequent snacks and force-feedings of her six-year-old daughter Ruby, who insists she's on a diet, before moving on to question the cadre of skinny girls at the memorial service for Alicia's online protÉgÉe Halley, a teen who internalized all too well her dad's love of size-2 women. Juliet doesn't get the house, but settles for one almost as grand, with a nice roomy kitchen. Witty Waldman is so endearingly pro-kid that you may run right out and get pregnant, and so unsparing about Hollywood sylphs and pro-anorexia websites that you may never diet again. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
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. --Barbara Bibel Copyright 2004 Booklist