Death Gets a Time-Out

Rating:
Summary: Slow-moving "Mommy-Track" mystery.
Review: Ayelet Waldman's "Death Gets a Time-Out" is the fourth entry in her "Mommy-Track" mystery series. The heroine is Juliet Applebaum, a public defender turned stay-at-home mom. Now that her kids are no longer infants, Juliet has a part-time job as a private investigator with her good friend, Al Hockey. Juliet and Al have been hired to find some exculpatory evidence that may help a young man named Jupiter Jones, stepbrother of Lilly Green, who is an Oscar-winning actress and an old friend of Juliet's. Jupiter may face the death penalty for killing his lover and stepmother, Chloe Jones.

The "Mommy-Track" mystery series started out well, mostly because the first few books were light and breezy. Juliet's sardonic sense of humor, often aimed at herself, was refreshingly droll, and the novels moved along quickly.

The same cannot be said for "Death Gets a Time-Out," unfortunately. This time, Juliet's whining is more annoying than amusing, and the mystery is so convoluted, tedious, and long-winded, that it was truly a chore to finish it. This book needed some serious editing. By the time I finally reached the long-awaited conclusion, I was bored with the large cast of characters and their endless troubles. "Death Gets a Time-Out" is neither amusing nor particularly absorbing, and I do not recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Slow-moving "Mommy-Track" mystery.
Review: Ayelet Waldman's "Death Gets a Time-Out" is the fourth entry in her "Mommy-Track" mystery series. The heroine is Juliet Applebaum, a public defender turned stay-at-home mom. Now that her kids are no longer infants, Juliet has a part-time job as a private investigator with her good friend, Al Hockey. Juliet and Al have been hired to find some exculpatory evidence that may help a young man named Jupiter Jones, stepbrother of Lilly Green, who is an Oscar-winning actress and an old friend of Juliet's. Jupiter may face the death penalty for killing his lover and stepmother, Chloe Jones.

The "Mommy-Track" mystery series started out well, mostly because the first few books were light and breezy. Juliet's sardonic sense of humor, often aimed at herself, was refreshingly droll, and the novels moved along quickly.

The same cannot be said for "Death Gets a Time-Out," unfortunately. This time, Juliet's whining is more annoying than amusing, and the mystery is so convoluted, tedious, and long-winded, that it was truly a chore to finish it. This book needed some serious editing. By the time I finally reached the long-awaited conclusion, I was bored with the large cast of characters and their endless troubles. "Death Gets a Time-Out" is neither amusing nor particularly absorbing, and I do not recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Such a perfect read for Moms!
Review: For anyone who has yet to discover the world of Juliet Applebaum and the writing of Ayelet Waldman--you are in for such a treat!

I find myself laughing out loud as I read this book, recognizing some many typical Mom-in-the-trenches moments while flipping pages quickly and reading late into the night due to its absorbing murder-mystery plot. (And as a Mom where you have to get up at the crack of dawn with your kids--I find that the ultimate testament to a great book!) Juliet's down-to-earth attitude and bitingly funny observations pervade Death Gets a Time Out. At various points Juliet is fishing her pregnancy test out of the toilet where she dropped it, wearing a dated 10-year-old dress to an elegant L.A. banquet and noting the dim lighting that benefits all the botoxed-enhanced women who seem to be in attendance, and careening between nursery school pick-ups and getting statements from murder witnesses.

For me, balancing being the mom of a 9 and 10 year old with writing parenting books (most recently The Mom Book and Sign Me Up for Simon & Schuster), I find myself constantly torn between my 24/7 Mom role and being overwhelmed with the intensity of love for my kids, to wanting nothing more than to escape for a couple hours to the world of work and adults. Ayelet Waldman completely captures the emotional truths of being torn between roles.

I have so little time to read that when I do, I want the book to be fabulous--and Ayelet Waldman's always are!

Rating:
Summary: Likeable heroine in a readable mystery
Review: I was hooked as soon as I read page one, and had trouble putting down the book until the end. This is a tribute to Ayelet Waldman's skill as a writer as well as her likeable heroine.

The ending is pretty easy to guess (well, except for the exact villain, and by the end it didn't matter which of two or three possibles was actually guilty). The heroine remains charming -- the kind of person you'd want to know as a neighbor, a "normal," unglamorous mom on the edge of the Hollywood scene. The plot elements actually seem a little stale: true/false memories, rehab center with psychiatrist who's a little too cozy with his patients, cult, ex-hippies with names like Polaris and Jupiter.

Still, I read the book all the way through and I never once felt the urge to pull out the blue pencil and second-guess the writer or the editors. And we get some comic relief with vignettes of family life from the mommy perspective. Juliet's children are typical little terrors. Her husband, Peter, is almost too good to be true.

This is a cozy mystery, deftly plotted, perfect for an escape, by a real pro. With fresher plot ingredients and a little more character depth, would be five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Well written in many ways but a couple of flaws
Review: I would have to agree with reviewers who don't find the mommy stuff quite as interesting as the author seems to, although I think if you read a book where the gimmick is the travails of stay at home moms, you could expect a lot of stuff about kids, carpools, and whining about lack of respect for this tough job. I don't doubt that it's a tough job, but this book's character seems to mostly have other people caring for her children, which is why she has time to investigate a mystery.

The detective-heroine-mom Juliet has a very part-time job as a partner in a fledgling investigation firm -- they (she and an ex-cop) work for criminal defense lawyers who request their assistance. Juliet herself is a former public defender (obviously still missing her job) who is married to a Hollywood screenwriter (sounds a lot like the author's own life) and moves on the edges of the Hollywood film scene. Juliet is good friends with a famous actress, who asks her to investigate a highly-publicized case involving a man in jail awaiting trial for killing his stepmother. The man's father heads up a lucrative (for him) California-type-cult religion involving self-improvement and aliens. It turns out that the accused man is related to the actress who is picking up the legal bills but she wants the relationship kept secret.

In addition to too much of the mommy track stuff, my other complaint has to do with the ending -- it's one of those "everyone listens while the detective explains the whole complicated business" (in several pages) endings. I just hate those kinds of endings. If it takes so long to tie up all the loose ends in such a boring way (a monologue), something's wrong with the plotting, in my opinion. Still, the writing style moves quickly and keeps you engaged -- so I definitely recommend the book, and stay at home moms may find the mommy stuff more engaging than I did. I will probably read more by this author.

Rating:
Summary: Hot on the Mommy-Track
Review: I've read all of Ayelet Waldman's Mommy Track mysteries and this one may be the best yet. Juliet Applebaum is at work again, to clear the name of her best friend's step-brother. She must discover what went on in the past to figure out what has happened in the present. In the course of her investigation, she begins to wonder if she won't clear her friend's step-brother only to find out that her friend is the killer!

The usual humor of Ms. Waldman's mysteries is in full flow here. Juliet is someone you'd love to have as a friend in the good times and would hope to have as a champion in the bad times.

This is an exceedingly fun series.

Rating:
Summary: Concentrate on the Mystery
Review: In most of these series books, the "gimmick" is secondary to the mystery (i.e. caterer, aspiring writer, etc.). In this series, it seems that the mystery is secondary to the gimmick of Juliet being a stay-at-home mom who really doesn't want to stay at home.

While I'm sure this is appealing to other mothers who've been in this same position, it makes for boring reading. I want to read about the mystery...not pages about Juliet scouring her son and his classmates' heads for lice or her son pooping in his pants at a public park. I'm sure these stories were cute to her family and Mommy friends, but to the average reader, they're stupid and take away from the story.

Unfortunately, these kids who are such a focus of the books are spoiled brats and completely unlikeable. At 4 and 2, they had the vocabularies of college professors. At 2 1/2, Isaac was still nursing and demanding that Julet "bring me my breasts." All I kept hoping was that the killer would get these two next and spare the rest of the cast. No one was more annoying than them.

Since the author has molded this series completely after her own life, and according to her bio she has four kids, I guess we're in for a few more brats and a lot more stories of pooping and spitting up. I don't think I'll stick around to find out about it.

Rating:
Summary: Time Out for a Great Book!
Review: In _Death Gets a Time-Out_, Ayelet Waldman has finally hit her stride as a mystery writer. Her first book introduced mommy-track nosy sleuth Juliet Applebaum, featuring snappy dialogue, good intial scene-setting, but ultimately it didn't deliver in either plot or as a mystery. The second book well-captured the haze of the new mom, but when we found out whodunit, I had too many flashbacks to the first book. Book three broke chose a new type of murderer but lacked a sense of place and wasn't consistent in describing Juliet's kids.

Here, she did everything right. If you enjoyed any of Waldman's three previous "Mommy-track Mysteries" then _Time-Out_ will delight you because it has it all; twisty plot strands that keep raising more and more questions, plenty of suspects and their deliberate misinformation. The characterization that made the first book so fresh, Juliet's relationship with her family and her musings on how she's not a mom who Does It All, is kept going in almost every chapter. And Waldman finally did some homework on Life in LA this time; Juliet appears to live there in this book. I loved the scene where she's on her cell phone to another cell phone and notices her caller's freeway is moving faster. I hope she gets a better copy editor to catch mistakes like "Cedar's Sinai" which show she doesn't live there or Elect X for "City Counsel" signs that meant too much time in court instead of on the neighborhood streets. This book is too good to have silliness like that staining it.

Juliet's racking up the miles on the mom-mobile, driving from a recovery center for wealthy addicts to a religious center based on astrology, with stops in on her movie-star friend whose staff wear khakis. It was also nice to get to know her partner Al better in this book. So: does Juliet have any friends that carry over from book to book? Is this a lack in her character? Most moms find friendship invaluable, and Juliet is driving a carpool, so why do we never meet the kids or their parents? That's about the only thing lacking from Time-Out, and it probably would have made more sense to remove the carpool reference rather than have the rest of us moms wonder about it. After all, her kids go to two different schools, that could make carpooling difficult (or it would make it mandatory!) Having Juliet try to escape a mom who wants to know everything her perschooler said in Juliet's car while Juliet needs to go chase some bad guys would be the extra frosting on this delicious sundae of a book.

Rating:
Summary: Time Out for a Great Book!
Review: In _Death Gets a Time-Out_, Ayelet Waldman has finally hit her stride as a mystery writer. Her first book introduced mommy-track nosy sleuth Juliet Applebaum, featuring snappy dialogue, good intial scene-setting, but ultimately it didn't deliver in either plot or as a mystery. The second book well-captured the haze of the new mom, but when we found out whodunit, I had too many flashbacks to the first book. Book three broke chose a new type of murderer but lacked a sense of place and wasn't consistent in describing Juliet's kids.

Here, she did everything right. If you enjoyed any of Waldman's three previous "Mommy-track Mysteries" then _Time-Out_ will delight you because it has it all; twisty plot strands that keep raising more and more questions, plenty of suspects and their deliberate misinformation. The characterization that made the first book so fresh, Juliet's relationship with her family and her musings on how she's not a mom who Does It All, is kept going in almost every chapter. And Waldman finally did some homework on Life in LA this time; Juliet appears to live there in this book. I loved the scene where she's on her cell phone to another cell phone and notices her caller's freeway is moving faster. I hope she gets a better copy editor to catch mistakes like "Cedar's Sinai" which show she doesn't live there or Elect X for "City Counsel" signs that meant too much time in court instead of on the neighborhood streets. This book is too good to have silliness like that staining it.

Juliet's racking up the miles on the mom-mobile, driving from a recovery center for wealthy addicts to a religious center based on astrology, with stops in on her movie-star friend whose staff wear khakis. It was also nice to get to know her partner Al better in this book. So: does Juliet have any friends that carry over from book to book? Is this a lack in her character? Most moms find friendship invaluable, and Juliet is driving a carpool, so why do we never meet the kids or their parents? That's about the only thing lacking from Time-Out, and it probably would have made more sense to remove the carpool reference rather than have the rest of us moms wonder about it. After all, her kids go to two different schools, that could make carpooling difficult (or it would make it mandatory!) Having Juliet try to escape a mom who wants to know everything her perschooler said in Juliet's car while Juliet needs to go chase some bad guys would be the extra frosting on this delicious sundae of a book.

Rating:
Summary: Adorable mystery
Review: She went from a public defender to a stay-at-home mom but now that her two children are older, Juliet Applebaum is going into partnership with Al Hockey, a former investigator for the public defenders. They are opening up a private detective agency housed temporarily in Al's garage until they bring in enough money to have a real office. At a Hollywood charity function, Juliet runs into her good friend Lilly Green, a famous actress who is in desperate need of her firm's discrete services.

Lilly's stepbrother Jupiter Jones is accused of killing his stepmother Chloe, the wife of Polaris Jones who is the head of the Church of Cosmological Unity. Chloe was blackmailing Lilly and she asked Jupiter to help her put a stop it. She believes that Jupiter may have killed Chloe because of their close bond but when Juliet starts investigating she comes to believe that Jupiter didn't kill Chloe and that makes the real killer exceeding anxious to stop the investigation even if it means murdering again.

Although the subject matter of survivor guilt and repressed memories is very serious topics, Juliet's interactions with her husband and children bring a note of much need of humor to the somber story line. Readers will be particularly tickled to realize that Juliet is pregnant again and her reaction to this unexpected event is truly memorable. DEATH GETS A TIME-OUT is darker in tone than the previous works in this series but it is just as good.

Harriet Klausner