KILLABLE HOURS

American lawyer Amy Brown loves London, where she’s currently posted with DW3—Winter, Worthington & Walker—but hates her boss, crotchety Daniel Benedict Blake. Well past retirement age, Blake thrives on making life miserable for Amy and her colleagues. Sick of getting fired on a regular basis, she beats him to the punch one morning and resigns but has second thoughts later that day when she discovers she’s pregnant. Unpaid maternity leave will be costly, and who’d hire a pregnant lawyer? Sneaking back into the office to retrieve her letter of resignation, she finds it on Blake’s desk near his dead body. Allergic to nuts, Blake apparently died by eating some candy. Only Amy seems to find the official explanation implausible, given her boss’s caution about nuts, or to care. When a note she discovers implies that Blake was tricked into eating the fatal confection, she decides to investigate. The process, made humorously awkward by her progressing pregnancy, involves regular confabs with twitchy braniac Paula Lawrence, a droll creation whose specialty is product analysis. Polly’s chocolate updates and Amy’s close calls with the unknown killer pass for plot development. The barracudas at DW3—frigid neatnik David Knight, harridan office manager Helen Matthews Smith, two-faced man-eater Kimberly Sullivan—all seem likely suspects. Less scary but equally suspicious are courtly Ted Cunningham and preppy newcomer Josh Hall.

Amy’s tart first-person narrative, which puts an entertaining spin on office politics, makes up for a slew of plot flaws. Not a memorable debut, but perfect for those who hate lawyers and love chocolate.