DEATH BY PANTYHOSE by Laura Levine

DEATH BY PANTYHOSE
By Laura Levine
Kensington Books
www.kensingtonbooks.com
ISBN: 9780758207852
Hardback, 244 pages, $22.00
Genre: Mystery

Freelance writer Jaine Austen’s finances are looking pretty good until a con man, under the guise of a potential employer, takes her for a free lunch and her Toyota. Now Jaine has to come up with enough funds for a new car. Desperate for money, she reluctantly agrees to become a writer for feminist comedian Dorcas MacKenzie whose signature is cutting up a pair of pantyhose and throwing it at her audience. On and off stage, Dorcas is heckled by Vic, a mean-spirited comedian who can’t keep his hands off the ladies. Luck seems to follow Vic around until the night he jeers Dorcas one too many times and Dorcas assaults him in front of a bar filled with people. Later that night, Vic’s found strangled to death by a pair of pantyhose, leading to Dorcas’s arrest. Jaine’s on the case in a heartbeat, conducting her own investigation, trying to figure out who among the many suspects offed Vic.

Jaine Austen is a fun character, a woman who can’t resist fattening foods and her moody cat, Prozac. The emails from her parents (this time over a lucky shirt of her dad’s) bump the humor bar even higher, and the characters Jaine contends with while doing her amateur sleuthing generate plenty of laughs.