MAUVE AND MURDER

Cassie Ferris plays number two to Roger “Wonderful” Weber on Austin’s leading morning radio show—only he’s not wonderful, and she’s tired of being the butt of his on-the-air jokes and off-the-air power trips. As part of her deejay duties, Cassie, smarting from a nasty divorce in which she lost custody of her youngest daughter, has to attend a promotional party for one of the station’s biggest clients: Happy Twosomes, a posh health club and video dating service—even though a singles party with Roger is the last place she wants to be. And Roger’s last place too, it turns out, when he’s poisoned with a plant from the beautifully landscaped club. The two leading suspects are Cassie and her oldest daughter, a botany major who spent part of the evening talking about poisonous houseplants and the other part throwing her drink on Roger. But Sergeant Wayne Root finds more suspects. It seems Roger liked blackmail, and it seems he knew something funny was happening with Happy Twosomes and the station that might involve the station manager, an old friend of Cassie’s, or account executive Rachel Sankey, or the club’s owner, a handsome psychologist interested in Cassie. Pursuing her own investigation, cowering Cassie finds the courage to fight for herself and her daughters.

Deftly plotted, with an appealing protagonist, this new entry from the author of the Purple Sage series (Mistletoe from Purple Sage, 1997, etc.) is a solid, if not exactly original, cozy.