Murder My Deer
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this eleventh mystery in the series.
In Murder, My Deer, Kate and her sweetie's budding romance has finally flowered into a full‑fledged marriage. But no one ever promised them a rose garden. Deer have gate‑crashed their yard to munch every bud, blossom, and petal. Instead of happily honeymooning, Kate and her sweetie attend the deer‑abused support group for those whose dearly beloved plants have been deerly beheaded. Antlers clash during group discussion, since everyone has their own idea for deer prevention . . . from feeding them to killing them. Dr. Searle Sandstrom, ex‑military, would like to use a gun, napalm, and land mines. But someone bashes in his head first, and no one spots any hoofprints near his dead body. Killing season is open, and Kate is game to flush out the hunter before she becomes the hunted game.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kate Jasper and her crew of Marin County's most lovable loonies are back (after 1999's Murder on the Astral Plane), which is good news for the many fans of this sort of shrewd, zany mystery romp. Kate, who runs a business called Jest Gifts when she's not solving crimes, has just married her live-in lover, restaurant and art gallery owner Wayne Caruso, at the Marin county clerk's office, but she hasn't yet told anyone--especially not her obnoxious family. Imagine Kate's chagrin when Felix Byrne, an equally unpleasant reporter friend, shows up at a meeting of the Deerly Abused, a group of local residents keen to control the deer that munch their gardens. Felix has learned about the secret wedding, but he stumbles (literally) into a bigger story when one member of this group--who advocates blasting the doe-eyed predators with Claymore mines--is discovered dead from a crushed skull. Suspects abound: a former actress who wraps herself in layers of clothes to ward off attention; a plastic surgeon with a roving eye; an heiress with a support-group fetish; an eccentric black British postmistress; a slick Asian chef and television star--the whole Agatha Christie crew, as it were, transplanted to Girdner's fictional town of Abierto. When the local police chief turns out to be an addled elder who sings "I Feel Pretty" during interrogations, it's up to Kate to dig out everybody's hidden connections to the dead man. If this is your kind of thing, Girdner does it as deftly as anyone.
