A Cry for Self-Help
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Kate Jasper, Marin County, California’s own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this eighth mystery in the series.
In A Cry for Self-Help, Kate Jasper and her sweetie take the plunge and join a Wedding Ritual Class, hoping to find inspiration for their own possible nuptials. On a field trip to observe a scuba‑diving marriage ceremony, Sam Skyler, the man who has become a living legend as a human‑potential guru, is not propelled into marriage, but is instead pushed over an oceanside cliff to his death. Sam Skyler practiced finger puppet therapy at the Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation. He was purported to be a man of psychic sensitivity and personal genius. So how come he did not notice the person who pushed him? Kate is once again wedded to an inconvenient murder rather than to her sweetie. Can she get a simple annulment from the case . . . or will it be a fatal one?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Welcome to Marin County, Calif., where the characters in this quirky mystery want only to reclaim their inner cores, merge emotionally, eat vegetarian (organically grown, of course) or murder one another. Kate Jasper's eighth appearance (after Most Likely to Die) finds her and her fiance, restaurant owner Wayne Caruso, on the trail of a killer who pushed renowned self-help guru Sam Skyler off a cliff. Sam, wealthy and charismatic founder of the Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation, had a troubled past--he had nearly been convicted of murdering his wife by pushing her off a balcony. His present followers are fanatically devoted and hound Kate and Wayne mercilessly when they begin to pry. Much of the sleuthing is secondary to a galaxy of colorful characters all involved in New Age activities: searching for "the manifestation of their essence"; becoming cosmically charged; or just seeking good karma. Yvonne stages wedding ritual seminars; Diana is a tantric yoga goddess; Emma writes a children's book series whose heroine is Connie the Condom. Kate's relentless questioning reveals that Sam had been at odds with Martina, his institute's director, over a lucrative buyout offer. She also discovers a bewildering variety of other motives. Kate's gag-gift business, Jest gifts, seems a perfect metaphor for this offbeat, tongue-in-cheek and endlessly appealing mystery, which will leave readers energized and blissed.
