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MURDER CAN RAIN ON YOUR SHOWER
by Selma Eichler
Signet, March 2003
272 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0451208234


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Desiree Shapiro, private eye and zaftig heroine of Selma Eichler's series, risks a visit from Miss Manners and a sharp talking-to, when she, the aunt (of Ellen, the bride) and Allison Lynton (mother of Mike, the groom) throw a bridal shower. Miss Manners would tell them that it's bad manners for family remembers to throw a shower. Maybe that's why things end badly.

Thanks to Mike's aunt, Bobbie Jean, the shower is being held at her country club, the super elegant Silver Oaks. Allison and Desiree have slaved to make the menu "just so," but things go very wrong when Bobbie Jean goes into a seizure during the salad course and dies.

Mike begs Desiree to investigate what turns out to be a murder -- the salad laced with a lethal herb, monkshood.

There's no shortage of suspects. Bobbie Jean was, as Allison, her sister-in-law describes her, a "sexual predator." Four of Bobbie Jean's enemies, whose grievances date back more than thirty years, are at the shower.

First, Bobbie Jean went after -- and captured -- Lorraine Corwin's fiancé. When that affair ended, she set her sights on Carla Fremont's husband. He left his wife and became Bobbie Jean's husband number two. Bobbie Jean accused Carla's mother, Robin, of being in the backyard in a menage a trois with the Fremont's gardener and pool boy, when, according to Robin, it was Bobbie Jean who was in that compromising situation. Next, Bobbie Jean convinced Grace and Karl Banner to become partners in a restaurant. A year later, she began to suspect (incorrectly, as it happened) that they were defrauding her. She sued them and lost. They countersued for slander, but they lost. And yet another motive is added when a secret from Allison's past comes to light, and Wes, Bobbie Jean's brother, reveals to Desiree that his persistent defense of his sister almost wrecked his marriage.

Wes, father of the groom, has persistently turned a blind eye to his sister's behavior. He blames himself for her character, because, after the death of their mother, he was sent away to Yale, and Bobbie Jean was left in the hands of a cold father and uncaring nannies. Had he been around, Wes reasons, Bobbie Jean would have been different person. When Allison recounts this tale of Bobbie Jean's childhood, Desiree answers, "Listen...maybe the Boston Strangler wasn't blessed with such a hotsy-totsy childhood either...who knows...how much affection was lavished on little Josef Stalin for that matter."

Eichler does not disappoint her longtime fans, skillfully interweaving Desiree's investigations and her personal life -- interfering friends, a possible love interest, and her concerns about Ellen and Mike.

As usual, Desiree is engaging and witty (especially in her asides to the reader). One of the funniest scenes occurs when Desiree has to paint a picture of Bobbie Jean as a candidate for sainthood in order to get a waiter to part with the information that ends up solving the case.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, January 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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