Survival Instincts - Softcover

Piesman, Marissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440224535 ISBN 13: 9780440224532

Publisher: Dell, 1997

Synopsis

This is the latest mystery featuring Nina Fischman, that witty Upper West Side lawyer who's slipping out of her thirties, still on a diet and without a boyfriend. Just three months after Nina gave up everything to follow her boyfriend Jonathan to California, she is back in New York--single, jobless, living with her mother and ready to start all over again. But the doldrums quickly subside when her brother-in-law, the dermatologist, becomes a murder suspect. Ken was involved in a real estate deal with Andy, the dead man, a scientist whose researches involved animal experimentation, and he seems to have been poisoned--just what Nina needed. She and her equally irrepressible mother Ida can't keep their noses out of trouble and start their own investigation. Whodunit? The dead man's striking wife? Andy's lab colleagues? The animal activist? Ken? And can Nina figure it all out as the clues fall into place? You bet.

About this title

Review

Things are not exactly looking up for Nina Fischman--recently split from her boyfriend, unemployed, back living with her mother in Manhattan, and at 40, feeling that perhaps her best years are behind her (and even those weren't so great). Quietly slipping into compromised complacency, she is suddenly jolted back to life by--what else?--a murder mystery. To add to the intrigue, a prime suspect is her brother-in-law, who not only worked with the recently departed, but just happened to be involved in a lucrative real estate deal with him, so guess who now owns the property? Motive? You bet. But there is also the animal-rights group who had targeted the late scientist for his treatment of lab animals, and even his widow had her reasons. At times funny and consistently quirky, Survival Instincts is a fun read that keeps the reader guessing.

From Kirkus Reviews

Nina Fischman's back from her abortive trek to L.A. with Jonathan Harris, sans man, sans job, sans pride (she has to move in with her mother, for crying out loud). But when her mild brother-in-law, Ken Rubin, is implicated in the poisoning of his real-estate partner, Andy Campbell, Nina (Alternate Sides, 1995, etc.) has herself another crime-solving gig, this time under cover of helping her successful ``friend'' Ellen Simon research a story for the New Yorker. Though there's nothing very mysterious about the case--Roz Brillstein, Andy's flashy widow, blames the animal-rights activists of SPASM (the Society for the Protection of All Small Mammals) who were protesting Andy's experiments with lab rats, though Andy's former partner, who became former after bedding down with Roz, looks equally suspicious--it does bring Nina together with dishy SPASM executive director Peter Slater (``even this guy's knuckles looked good''), give her a chance for a showdown with the killer and her no-nonsense mom, and leave her with her hair dyed and an unexpected new job. As usual, the lame mystery is an excuse for some laugh-out- loud chatter and Piesman's uniquely astringent insights into family relations (``In Jewish families, people generally avoided saying anything nice to each other. It was some sort of incest taboo''). -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dell
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0440224535
• ISBN 13: 9780440224532
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 224