Love is Murder
Linda Palmer
Berkley, June 2004, $5.99, 277 pp.
ISBN 042519679

She married her photojournalist husband when she was nineteen and spent most of the years they had together taking incredible pictures in the wilds of Africa. When he dies in an automobile accident, Morgan Tyler returns to the United States and moves in with her best friend until she can decide what she wants to do with her life. The head writer of the soap opera Love of My Life takes her under his wing and teaches her the ropes. When he is paralyzed due to a heart attack, she becomes the show's news head writer.

Damon Radord, Vice President of Daytime Programming, thinks every woman in the world loves him. Morgan constantly ducks his passes but when he is murdered she feels no joy. The two homicide detectives assigned to the case think she is a viable suspect because of all the alterations they had in front of witnesses. When a second person connected to the show is killed, Morgan decides that the only way to clear her name and stop living in fear is to find the perpetrator, only this time she comes closer to dying than she ever did before.

This debut chick-lit mystery is an amusing amateur sleuth tale that gives readers an insider's look at what goes on behind the scenes of a soap opera. The protagonist is a vulnerable person who attracts the attention of two sexy men and doesn't know how to deal with it since she never dated a lot before she married her husband. LOVE IS MURDER is a great puzzler with so many suspects who had a motive to see the victim dead that readers won't be able to guess who the killer is until the author chooses to reveal the perpetrator. Linda Palmer's first novel is a definite winner.

Harriet Klausner