Jerrilyn Farmer Perfect Sax

Perfect Sax

Jerrilyn Farmer

Morrow, Jan 2004, $22.95, 304 pp.

ISBN 0380978903

Maddie Bean's catering and events planning business is becoming very chic with the rich, powerful and famous in Las Angeles and Hollywood. Her firm is catering an event to raise funds for the Woodburn School of Music so that gifted children who can't afford the fees can obtain a scholarship. The gala is a smashing success and Maddie is justifiably proud of her role in the affair.

She leaves the affair with a couple who bought a one hundred thousand dollar musical instrument for their son. Maddie loaned her car to an employee who needs to get to her boyfriend, because to is despondent over her boyfriend failing to earn his dissertation. Maddie arrives home to find police surrounding her house. Her employee lies dead in her bedroom. Not much time passes before Maddie discovers her neighbor is murdered, an angry man who was upset that Maddie found his private papers lying in her street. She not only thinks the two deaths are linked but she believes someone is out to kill her as well but nobody will believe her, thinking she is overwrought and upset.

Jerrilyn Farmer is a fabulous writer who has created one of the most delightful and charming amateur sleuth souls in the mystery world. The plot is fast-paced and action packed but the heart of this who-done-it lies with the characters and sorting out the villains from the heroes. PERFECT SAX has several sub-plots that make this tale all the more fascinating, especially someone stealing the valuable musical instrument.

Harriet Klausner