Death by Pantyhose (Jaine Austen Series #6) » (~)

Laura Levine is a comedy writer whose television credits include The Bob Newhart Show, Laverne & Shirley, The Love Boat, The Jeffersons, Three's Company, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Her work has been published in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. She lives with her husband in Los Angeles, and is currently working on the next Jaine Austen mystery.

Freelance writer Jaine Austen is back! This time around she's writing jokes for a female comic in order to make a buck. But when the comic's male rival is found dead, strangled by a pair of pantyhose, and Jaine's client is arrested, it's once again up to her to figure out whodunit.

Jaine Austen has never been able to resist the siren call of an Eskimo Pie, just like she can't resist renewing her romance with Andrew, an old crush. With her bank account hitting new lows, she's also just agreed to write jokes for Dorcas, a stand-up comic who throws her pantyhose into the audience as a punch line.

Not only is Dorcas's act a bomb, she is heckled by Vic, a gorgeous fellow comic who is equally good on stage and in the sack. Unfortunately Vic loves performing in both venues. He gets in bed with a sexy waitress, a pretty new lover, and a sweet girlfriend while professing his undying love for each. Worse, he is two-timing his aging agent. Pretty soon Vic has an enemy's list a mile long, and when he needles Dorcas one time too many, she assaults him at a club's open-mike night.

Naturally when Vic is murdered with Dorcas's pantyhose and that same Dorcas is standing over his dead body, the police arrest...Dorcas. They figure it's an open-and-shut case although Jaine figures no killer can be that dumb-even Dorcas. But when Jaine sets out to find the real culprit, she is distracted by one dating disaster after another with Andrew-and she may not see the dark side of comedy until she faces the business end of a gun and a cold, deadly grin...

Publishers Weekly

At the outset of Levine's fun sixth Jaine Austen cozy (after 2006's The PMS Murder), the L.A. freelance writer takes a low-paying gig writing jokes for Dorcas MacKenzie, a standup comic who uses pantyhose in her act. When Dorcas's comic archrival Vic is found dead strangled by, you guessed it, a pair of control-top hose Jaine determines to clear her new client's name. Vic was a sleazeball survived by plenty of enemies cum likely suspects, including his jilted girlfriend, Allison; the waitress he was bonking on the side; his writer, Hank; and his discarded agent, Manny. Parental e-mails, tangles with a potential beau and cuddling with her cat, Prozac, distract Jaine from the mystery, but the digressions also humanize the protagonist. Jaine's dogged sleuthing and screwball antics will entertain fans of this fizzy series. (June)