Dead by Any Other Name

August 8, 2011
At the start of Stuart’s diverting second Janet’s Planet mystery set in the Hudson Valley (after 2010’s To the Manor Dead), Janet Petrocelli receives a call from Natasha Wolfson, a local singer trying to raise cash to go to L.A., about selling some of her jewelry to Janet’s second-hand shop. Janet is happy to oblige, but Natasha strikes her as “really desperate, scared, and probably high.” When she learns that Natasha later took a fatal fall at Devil’s Kitchen, one of the most treacherous climbs in the Catskills, she suspects the singer’s death was no accident. Janet, a former psychologist, embarks on a wild goose chase that involves bestselling authors, a prostitution ring, and a mysterious eastern European. Readers who are familiar with upstate New York’s colorful cultures will surely get a kick out of Janet’s wry assessments of the area’s zany characters and picturesque places.

July 15, 2011

A dead singer/songwriter looking for a comeback is at the center of this second case for a Hudson Valley psychotherapist-turned–antiques dealer and her big, happy, dysfunctional, non-biological family.

Janet Petrocelli (To the Manor Dead, 2010, etc.) is delighted to offer Natasha Wolfson, an "ex-semi-name" singer, $5,000 for the jewelry and junk she's unloading in connection with kick-starting her life at 29. But her pleasure in the transaction turns sour when Natasha is found dead at the bottom of Platte Cove. Det. Chevrona Williams, of the New York State Police, is satisfied that her death was an accident, or maybe suicide while of hippy-dippy mind, since Natasha seems to have been a keen proponent of better living through chemistry. But Janet, for reasons best known to her, is convinced that Natasha was murdered and that it's her job to identify the killer. It's true that Natasha's parents, pop psychology gurus Howard and Sally Wolfson, her Czech boyfriend Pavel and Pavel's wealthy landladies, mannish Lavinia Bump and her sister Octavia, to whom Pavel instantly transfers his affections, all seem sufficiently unbalanced to have pushed Natasha off a cliff. But then so do the series regulars, from Janet's caterer friend Abba Turner to her pal George, a gay nurse who's always in the throes of an unwise passion, to Josie Alvarez, the teenager who helped out in Janet's Planet until she was spirited away by a mean-spirited pair of foster parents.

The mystery and its solution, sketched out rather than worked out, are mainly a pretext for introducing you to some amiable misfits, some exotic pets and Janet's supremely gossipy narration.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011
Janet heads deep into the Hudson River valley to buy jewelry from a musician named Natasha, whom she finds to be troubled but full of plans for a new life in L.A. When Natasha's body is discovered at the bottom of a ravine a few days later, Janet is not convinced it was suicide. In between trying to run her second-hand store, Janet uses her therapist skills to uncover possible motives, interviewing, among others, Natasha's television-personality parents. The trail leads to a bar, whose employees cater to sexual tastes for a variety of clients, including a politician. Along the way, Janet is distracted by her new feelings for policewoman Chevrona and by Janet's teen friend Josie, who has problems of her own and wants to move in with Janet. Despite the secondhand-store frame, the emphasis in this slightly edgy mystery with cozy trimmings is on village life and the eccentric characters of the Hudson River valley. Recommend it to fans of Rosemary Harris' Dirty Business series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)