YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

    "Pampered to Death" by Laura Levine: Book Review

    By | Work + Money – Mon, Jul 11, 2011 9:35 PM EDT

    "Pampered to Death" by Laura Levine
    Kensington, 228 pp., $22
    Reviewed by David Marshall James

    Jaine Austen never met a snack she didn't like, as long as it didn't originate in an organic garden.

    Ditto her kitty, Prozac.

    Trouble is, for both of them, they're entering calorie-counting hell, in the guise of an enticing spa-resort week at a northern California retreat, The Haven. As in "The Havenochocolate."

    Jaine-- one vowel away from her homophonically famous namesake-- may be a writer, but she hasn't written anything that's been snatched up recently by Hollywood.

    That is, if you don't count her local TV ads for L.A. plumbing emporia.

    However, the quote-unquote vacation is not her splurge, but a well-meaning gift from her next-door neighbor, Lance, whose fanny Jaine saved in a previous murder mystery.

    Nevertheless, she's ready to kill him when she discovers the tasteless gray entrees on her dinner plate at the spa.

    Then, there are the predawn uphill nature hikes.

    Sara Lee, Sara Lee: Wherefore art thou, Sara Lee?

    Seems Jaine's not the only Crabby Abby at the retreat. Indeed, everyone's pretty much had it up to their surgically lifted brows with diva guest Mallory Francis, a B-list TV and movie performer who loves lording it over her old acquaintance who had a shot at stardom and who is now stuck running the spa on a shoestring.

    And, with a little help from her Valium, Tequila bottle, and the above-mentioned Sara Lee. All on the sly, but natch.

    When La Francis is strangled with a strand of kelp during a pore-cleansing treatment, the reader might suspect everyone "en spa" has had a tug on the makeshift noose, a la "Murder on the Orient Express."

    Such do the motives abound in this ninth Jaine Austen mystery, in which the usual chuckles abound, if not the usual calories.

    In Prozac, Levine has created one of the most memorable cats in the modern mystery-novel oeuvre (have you ever stopped to count them all?), although "Pro" probably wouldn't have made the T.S. Eliot cut.

    At which slight she would have probably thrown one substantial leg over her neck-- okay, maybe she could manage to lift it a few inches-- and commenced licking. Right, Pro?

    * * *