Nursery Crimes (A Mommy-Track Mystery)

“Ayelet Waldman has given birth to a fresh new franchise with her Mommy-Track mysteries. Juliet Applebaum is smart, fearless, and completely candid about life as a full-time mom with a penchant for part-time detective work.”—Sue Grafton A public defender turned stay-at-home mom, Juliet Applebaum is bored with playdates and trips to the park—so near the end of her second pregnancy, she gets off the mommy track to track down a murderer. . . . Juliet isn’t too surprised when her feisty, tantrum-throwing two-year old daughter doesn’t get into Hollywood’s premier preschool—but she’s shocked and suspicious when the school’s principal is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Against the advice of her screenwriter husband, and with her rambunctious toddler in tow, Juliet heads to the local playground to dig up some dirt on a disgruntled studio executive whose daughter wasn’t offered a place in the school. But she has some surprising new suspects to consider when her investigation takes her into a seedy on-line newsgroup—and the most dangerous parts of the human heart. “[Juliet is] a lot like Elizabeth Peters’s warm and humorous Amelia Peabody—a brassy, funny, quick-witted protagonist.”—Houston Chronicle