BAD SEED

The hardcover debut of cute, frisky, pint-sized Alex Bernier, a reporter for the small-potatoes Gabriel Monitor (circulation 20,000) whose cop boyfriend Cody has the exasperating experience of not being the one to rescue her from a bombing, a poisoning, and a near drowning in a genetically engineered rice paddy on the campus of upstate New York’s Benson University. Alex’s travails begin when obstreperous Shelley Freeman, in prison for poisoning her husband Lane, a p.r. flack for Benson U., demands Alex prove her innocent—even though Alex’s already busy filling in for her pal Jake “Mad” Madison, the paper’s science reporter, who first drinks his way through a romantic breakup, then ends up in the hospital after chasing his alcohol with percodan. Alex is on site when members of DBFC (Don’t Break the Food Chain) dress up as vegetables and picket brilliant Dr. Kate Barnett’s talk on creating mutant foods for third world countries. When Barnett is bludgeoned to death, Alex must fend off a new Monitor columnist and a New York Times stringer. Will she scoop everyone in revealing who killed Barnett, what her secret agenda was, what those kids in funny veggie costumes were doing, what Barnett’s amoral scientific peers were up to, and all the rest? You betcha, with self-deprecating wit and lots of bruises, noshes, and gossip along the way.

Alex, a better dresser than Stephanie Plum and maybe a tad funnier, is delightful. And Saulnier, an editor at Cornell magazine, can sashay her around a newsroom and a college campus with the best of them.