Book Review: Death by Smoothie by Laura Levine (Jaine Austen Mysteries #19)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Laughs and fun with a good mystery

Cons: All cons blended into a smoothie

The Bottom Line:

Bad actress murdered

Laughs and sub-plots galore here

Book is fun for all

This Smoothie Isn’t Healthy for Someone

It’s always a treat to pick up a new Jaine Austen Mystery because I know I’m in for a great book.  Death by Smoothie, the nineteenth in the series, is a perfect example.

If you haven’t met Jaine, she is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.  Since she struggles to make ends meet, she is always willing to take on any new client, and they usually lead her into some hilarious situations and murder.

This time, Jaine’s landed a job as a script doctor for I Married a Zombie.  No, we aren’t talking about the short lived, cult favorite sitcom (introduced in an earlier book in the series), but a revival musical that David, a recent lottery winner, is producing along with his girlfriend.  When Jaine gets the script, she realizes that it needs a lot of work since the producer also wrote the script and is planning to star in it.

Surprisingly, he’s not the worst actor in the cast.  That distinction goes to Misty, who is playing the female lead.  However, David is completely taken with her and can’t see any of her flaws.  Meanwhile, she is driving the rest of the cast crazy and making more work for Jaine as she has to keep cutting Misty’s lines.

Every day, Misty must drink a smoothie mid-afternoon, forcing rehearsals to completely shut down.  But one afternoon, after a couple of sips, Misty keels over dead.  Naturally, Jaine starts to investigate to find out what is really happening.  Will she figure it out?

Anyone who knows this series knows that there are many sub-plots in each book.  By my count, we get four of those here.  They do a good job of weaving in and out of the main mystery, and I was engaged the entire way through.  And, at times, these storylines intersect with each other or the main mystery.

Those sub-plots added to the humor of the story.  Jaine finds herself in some pretty wacky situations in these pages, and I smiled and laughed by way through the book.  There’s also humor in the narration, especially what Jaine imagines her cat, Prozac, is thinking.  This is a light book, but that’s exactly what it sets out to be.

That also comes through with the cast.  They are more type that full characters, created for the humor they can bring to the story.  However, they also work for the mystery.  They are just grounded enough that we care about the outcome.

And yes, there is a mystery in all these laughs and sub-plots.  I thought I had the killer pegged early, but it turned out I was wrong.  Yet the solution made sense, and I was having fun watching Jaine uncover motives I didn’t even suspect were hiding among the suspects.

Like most of the other books in the series, one of the sub-plots involves Jaine’s parents at their retirement community in Florida, told in a series of emails from both of them.  I’m not going to spoil anything except to say this might be my favorite of these sub-plots yet.

If you pick up Death by Smoothie expecting anything other than a comedic romp of a light mystery, you’ll be disappointed.  But if you are looking for plenty of laughs with your mystery, this is the book, and the series, for you.

Check out the rest of the Jaine Austen Mysteries.