Kate Jasper Mystery

Meet Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth. ("She's smart, funny, vulnerable, and unpretentious," says Marilyn Wallace, editor of the Sisters in Crime series.) In this first Kate Jasper mystery, Kate visits her chiropractor for a simple spinal adjustment, but instead finds a dead man on one of the tables . . . dead of a broken neck. And it seems everyone in the chiropractor's office knew the victim, Scott Younger, in one way or another, except for Kate herself. Maggie, Kate's friend and chiropractor, has known Scott for years, as has her staff. Her receptionist, Renee, even dated him. Devi knew Scott from college. Guru-follower Valerie accuses Scott of being a drug pusher! And Wayne, Scott's now unnecessary bodyguard, a shy, homely man who almost makes Kate forget her husband has left her, knew him the best of all. But Kate can't forget murder, especially since Wayne is the main suspect. And there is the pesky matter of Kate's fingerprints on the metal bar that broke Scott Younger's neck. Kate Jasper's in for a spine-tingling, bone-chilling adventure.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, is back in this second mystery in the series. The good news in The Last Resort is that Kate has finally divorced her husband, Craig, and is enjoying a platonic friendship with her now ex-husband, happy in her own new love life. The bad news is that Craig has been dating his divorce attorney, Suzanne Sorenson. Suzanne is everything Kate is not: tall, blond, elegant, ambitious, and ruthless. And now, Suzanne is dead as well, strangled on her late night jog while vacationing with Craig at a vegetarian health resort. Craig is suspected of Suzanne's murder by the local police and begs Kate to help exonerate him. Kate reluctantly agrees and checks herself into Spa Sante to investigate. Raw vegetables were never so dangerous.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this third mystery in the series. Everyone in Marin County has a hot tub, or so it seems. In Murder Most Mellow, Kate hosts a "human potential" group meeting in her hot tub. It goes swimmingly for at least one of the members, the belligerently optimistic computer programmer Sarah Quinn. But Sarah spouts, "you create your own reality," one time too many to the wrong person after the meeting. Sarah's human potential is permanently short-circuited when she is electrocuted in her own hot tub by one of her programmable robots. And there's a killer human behind the killer robot. Is it a business associate, a lover, a relative, or worse yet . . . a member of Kate's group? Kate is in hot water for real in this one, and it is on the boil.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this fourth mystery in the series. Kate and her new sweetie have finally moved in together in Fat-Free and Fatal. But her sweetie's venomous mother has moved in, too, and she is working hard at destroying the relationship. Kate signs up for a vegetarian cooking class to get out of the house and out from under the prongs of her almost mother-in-law's tongue. Only it is a case of out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire when the owner of the class's venue, the Good Thyme Cafe, is found dead . . . strangled by the electric cord of a SaladShooter. The police suspect Kate's best friend, Barbara. Kate sleuths, fearing that otherwise, her friend's fowl-free goose may be cooked.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this fifth mystery in the series. Kate's sweetie has finally moved his malevolent mother, Vesta, out of their house and into her own condo in Tea-Totally Dead. But Vesta uses her new home to host a family reunion for each and every member of her extended family. Attendance is compulsory, even for Kate. Vesta baits, insults, and slanders all the guests but her UFO-abductee roommate, Harmony, until after-dinner tea time. Vesta cannot interest anyone else in her private blend of herbal tea, which gives off the pungent bouquet of brewed sweat socks. Luckily for them, since the tea also has an extra infusion of poison that evening. By the following morning, Vesta is as dead as any affection her family might have held for her. And it is up to Kate to find the real fiend of the family.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this sixth mystery in the series. Kate is considering writing something besides jokes on the sides of coffee mugs for her gag gift company, Jest Gifts. To her own embarrassment, the stuff she is writing is poetry. In A Stiff Critique, she joins a writers' critique group with her friend Carrie, hoping for sensitive support. But the group's criticisms are more cruel than supportive, especially the verbal abuse from successful thriller novelist Slade Skinner (born Sherman Francis Skinner), uttered with condescension as he pumps a dumbbell up and down. When Slade is found face down on his keyboard with the bloody dumbbell beside him, no one seems surprised by the poetic justice. After all, writing is murder. But Kate wants the real story on the killing, before someone in the group plots the next chapter.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this seventh mystery in the series. Kate's twenty-fifth high school reunion was bad enough, but the post-reunion barbecue for the old gang was a real shock. Kate lends her own pinball machine, Hot Flash, to Sid Semling the week before his barbecue party. Sid, master prankster and live wire, does his own wiring on the pinball machine so it spews sexist menopausal insults as fast as he does. But when he steps up to play pinball at the party, it zaps the jokes right out of him. The machine's been rigged for electrocution, and Kate scores as the primary suspect. Everyone was annoyed by Sid, but it was Kate's pinball machine that made him the first man to die from a Hot Flash. She must short-circuit the real culprit before she becomes the next Most Likely to Die.

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?

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this ninth mystery in the series. Kate and her sweetie visit Ivan Nakagawa's bookstore for an author signing in Death Hits the Fan. The event features three authors and only a few more audience members, but the small audience does not stop Yvette Cassell from reading on and on as fellow author S. X. (Shayla) Greenfree's eyelids droop and she slumps forward. Kate is shocked by Shayla's novel approach to boredom. But it turns out that Shayla is not just dozing, she is dead. Is the murderer's unique signature the bracelet that Shayla snapped on before falling over? The police read an accusation into Shayla's last utterance of "Kate, I . . . " before Shayla slumped. But Kate did not even know Shayla. Or did she? The handwriting is on the wall. Can Kate read it before the murderer plots a sequel?

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this tenth mystery in the series. Kate Jasper is feeling "karmically impaired" in Murder on the Astral Plane. In her view, she carries an astral virus to any group she joins, always leaving someone just plain dead. Kate's best friend, Barbara Chu, says Kate's simply thinking negatively. Barbara practices a little metaphysical shock therapy by tricking Kate into participating in an unannounced psychic soiree. And sure as shooting stars, by the end of a blindfolded intuition exercise, Silk Sokoloff, author and columnist of "Erotica, Et Cetera," has been fatally garrotted by a wire cat toy. Kate figures one of the clairvoyants, intuitives, or telepaths in the group should be able to figure out whodunit. But their collective psychic vision is not anywhere near twenty-twenty. Now Kate needs her own crystal ball if she wants to die of old age rather than New Age.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this eleventh mystery in the series. In Murder, My Deer, Kate and her sweetie's budding romance has finally flowered into a full-fledged marriage. But no one ever promised them a rose garden. Deer have gate-crashed their yard to munch every bud, blossom, and petal. Instead of happily honeymooning, Kate and her sweetie attend the deer-abused support group for those whose dearly beloved plants have been deerly beheaded. Antlers clash during group discussion, since everyone has their own idea for deer prevention . . . from feeding them to killing them. Dr. Searle Sandstrom, ex-military, would like to use a gun, napalm, and land mines. But someone bashes in his head first, and no one spots any hoofprints near his dead body. Killing season is open, and Kate is game to flush out the hunter before she becomes the hunted game.

Kate Jasper, Marin County, California's own organically grown amateur sleuth, returns in this twelfth mystery in the series. Kate Jasper has sworn off groups, tired of her role as the Typhoid Mary of Murder. In A Sensitive Kind of Murder, it is her sweetheart, and now husband, who attends the Heartlink Men's Group. Kate is on her way to meet him afterward when a familiar car roars down the street, hits Steve Summers (journalist and fellow Heartlink member), flings him into the air, and then backs up to run over him again. The familiar car is her own sweetie's muscular Jaguar. Kate is sure her own gentle and gentlemanly husband was not driving the car at the fatal moment. But who was? Kate must break the Heartlink Men's circle of silence and go where no woman has gone before. Her husband's life may depend on Kate's estrogen-fueled intuition.