The Key

October 23, 2006
In Sturman's witty third mystery about stylish, hardworking Manhattanite Rachel Benjamin (after 2005's The Jinx
), the investment banker is on partner track both with her live-in boyfriend, Peter, and her Wall Street firm, where she's toiling on a risky leveraged buyout. But her slave-driver boss, Glenn Gallagher, makes her life hell, and when she begins receiving odd anonymous e-mails warning against the buyout, she wonders about his business ethics. Gallagher makes money but not so many friends—his abused employees resent him, as does his ex-wife, Naomi. But when he's murdered, Rachel becomes a chief suspect, and she must rely on her friends to help her evade police and her ingenuity to clear her name—and avoid becoming the next victim.

December 1, 2006
Working with the sarcastic and rude Glenn Gallagher is enough to induce saucy sleuth Rachel Benjamin to consider career options, but that doesn't mean she murdered him. Yet when Gallagher is poisoned--with his own pencil no less--the police immediately pencil in Rachel as the one and only suspect. Now Rachel must put her problems dealing with her new live-in fiance, Peter Forrest, on hold in order to track down a clever killer determined to frame her for the murder. Sturman's latest Rachel Benjamin mystery has the same delectable blend of snappy writing, chick-lit liveliness, and clever plotting as the first two books in this delightfully entertaining series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)