The PMS Murder by Laura Levine

The PMS Murder by Laura Levine is the 5th Jaine Austen mystery.

Sometime-sleuth Jaine Austen struggles to make ends—and zippers—meet while living on a freelance writer’s salary in Los Angeles. When she’s not hunting down the latest flavor of her favorite ice cream, she’s tracking down criminals on her own Walk of Infamy... On the front lines of the battle of the bulge, otherwise known as trying on bathing suits in the communal dressing room at Loehmann’s, Jaine makes a new friend—a wanna-be actress named Pam—and gets a new job: sprucing up Pam’s bare-bones resume. Their feeling of connection is mutual, so Pam invites Jaine to join The PMS Club–a women’s support group that meets once a week over guacamole and margaritas to commiserate about love and life.

But joining the club proves to be more a curse than a blessing for Jaine. Though she is warned that Rochelle, the hostess, makes a guacamole to die for, Jaine never takes the warning literally. Until another PMS member— Marybeth, a relentlessly perky interior decorator—drops dead over a mouthful of the green stuff after confessing she is having an affair with Rochelle’s husband. Turns out that someone knew about Marybeth’s nut allergy and added a fatal dose of peanut oil to the dip.

While Rochelle and her husband are the obvious suspects, everyone at that night’s meeting is under suspicion, including Jaine, putting a new job opportunity at a conservative downtown bank in jeopardy. So, instead of dishing dirt with The PMS Club, Jaine has to dig up dirt on the surviving members—an alcoholic widow, a sassy sixty- something, a too-fabulous honorary male PMS-er, and Pam. As Jaine delves deeper, she tunes into some truly sinister vibes, and it soon becomes clear: someone in this club thinks getting away with murder should be a privilege of membership...


While The PMS Murder is funny, it's very light. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I enjoyed reading it, but at the end, all I could think of was "that's it?" It's certainly a cute and quick read, but definitely not worth hardcover pricing. If you liked the previous books (and I did), you'll enjoy this one. It's light and frothy with all the elements of the previous books. But....in the end, nothing really changes in Jaine's life. There's just not enough character growth for me to be completely satisfied. Yet I will probably read the next one in the series. But from the library or borrowed from somewhere. I read this one over a few lunch breaks at work.

1 comment:

Wendy said...

I'm on the waiting list for this one at work. I just wish the cataloging department would release it out into the real world already! Heck, I should just go into cataloging and hijack a copy because I could probably read it in 12 hours :-)

I love this series because the way Levine writes. She really shows her TV roots, and writes real "fast" and "zippy." And frankly, I love Jaine's little observations about her cat Prozac.