Laura Levine
Author Book List

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...

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