Picture Perfect Corpse

March 18, 2013
Slan’s entertaining sixth scrap-n-craft mystery (after 2012’s Ready, Scrap, Shoot) opens with a bang: St. Louis, Mo., scrapbooker Kiki Lowenstein has just fatally shot Bill Ballard, who masterminded her husband’s murder, to save the life of her mother-in-law, Sheila Lowenstein. Meanwhile, pregnant Kiki’s ecstatic boyfriend, Det. Chad Detweiler, has just learned that he’s going to be a father. Unfortunately, the shooting incident, which involved Chad’s estranged wife, Brenda, has repercussions. When Brenda is murdered in Illinois, the evidence leads the police straight to Chad, but his fellow St. Louis officers can’t cross jurisdictional lines to help. And as she recovers from injuries she suffered in the shooting, Kiki looks into the truth about the death of her boss’s son years earlier. Also, something serious is bothering her daughter, Anya. Multiple plotlines keep the story moving briskly. Agent: Paige Wheeler, Folio Literary Management.

February 15, 2013
When your life is totally trashed, it's time to stand up and take charge. Kiki Lowenstein has just shot and killed the man who murdered her husband. He had already wounded her and a friend and was strangling her mother-in-law at the time, but still, she feels guilty. Kiki's own head wound was minor and her unborn baby unharmed. Her longtime boyfriend, Chad Detweiler, indicates that he's finally ready to divorce his drug-addicted wife, Brenda, and marry her. Then fresh disasters strike. Brenda is found shot dead, and Detweiler is arrested. Brenda's well-connected father, who holds the debt on the Detweiler family farm, is determined to get his son-in-law convicted of murder. All the while, Kiki's friend Dodie, her senior partner in their crafts shop, is dying of cancer. Kiki is stuck with her uncaring, self-absorbed mother, and her daughter Anya is obviously hiding something. A friend at the shop helps her retain a shark of a lawyer for Chad who works pro bono but insists that Kiki stay out of the investigation. Still, the intrepid sleuth not only comes up with a few good leads, but finds time to investigate the accidental death of Dodie's son after one of his high school friends blurts out that she caused his death. Accused of whining by one of her friends, Kiki realizes that it's up to her to get her life back while she still has one. Fans of this scrapbooking series (Ready, Scrap, Shoot, 2012, etc.) won't be surprised that sorely beset Kiki doesn't shine as a detective this time. But they'll be drawn to her ongoing personal struggles and her take on social problems, in this case self-mutilation.

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May 1, 2013

She survives a shooting and that's just for openers. It's a wild week for pregnant Kiki, whose life reads more "thriller" than "crafter" in her sixth outing (after Ready, Scrap, Shoot).

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