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THRILLED TO DEATH by Jennifer Apodaca

THRILLED TO DEATH

by Jennifer Apodaca

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 2006
ISBN: 0-7582-0988-6
Publisher: Kensington

The death of a spoiler magician takes ex-soccer mom Samantha Shaw (Ninja Soccer Moms, 2004, etc.) once more from the sedate world of matchmaking into the edgier realm of private investigation.

Shane Masters makes his living exposing other magicians’ signature illusions. But whose secrets does he plan to reveal on his nationally televised show at Storm Stadium in Lake Elsinore, Calif.? Rosy Malone wants to know if her granddaughter Nikki Eden is Shane’s next victim. Bo Kelly and Fletch Knight, friends of Samantha’s magician grandfather Barney, are worried about their acts too. And Sam’s got plenty of free time to investigate, since Heart Mates, her dating service, is currently closed while her boyfriend Gabe Pulizzi and his raffish brother Cal knock down enough walls to connect its offices with those of Pulizzi Investigations. So Sam puts aside her recurrent daydreams of Gabe, clad only in his tool belt, knocking on her bedroom door, long enough to take Barney to Masters’s deluxe motor home for a magician-to-magician talk—a confrontation that gets the attention of police detective Logan Vance when Masters later turns up dead. Now Vance, whose conversations with Sam often include references to “multiple orgasms,” is talking about suspects and alibis, and Sam wishes she could make herself disappear.

Even Houdini couldn’t unravel the tangles in Sam’s sex life. The mystery, on the other hand, is pretty tame.