A Cry for Self-help - Hardcover

Girdner, Jacqueline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0425156303 ISBN 13: 9780425156308

Publisher: Berkley Hardcover, 1997

Synopsis

Fortysomething entrepreneur, vegetarian, and amateur sleuth Kate Jasper finds herself caught up in a murder investigation when a famed self-help guru takes a fatal plunge off a seaside cliff during an aquatic wedding. By the author of Most Likely to Die.

About this title

Reviews

Welcome to Marin County, Calif., where the characters in this quirky mystery want only to reclaim their inner cores, merge emotionally, eat vegetarian (organically grown, of course) or murder one another. Kate Jasper's eighth appearance (after Most Likely to Die) finds her and her fiance, restaurant owner Wayne Caruso, on the trail of a killer who pushed renowned self-help guru Sam Skyler off a cliff. Sam, wealthy and charismatic founder of the Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation, had a troubled past?he had nearly been convicted of murdering his wife by pushing her off a balcony. His present followers are fanatically devoted and hound Kate and Wayne mercilessly when they begin to pry. Much of the sleuthing is secondary to a galaxy of colorful characters all involved in New Age activities: searching for "the manifestation of their essence"; becoming cosmically charged; or just seeking good karma. Yvonne stages wedding ritual seminars; Diana is a tantric yoga goddess; Emma writes a children's book series whose heroine is Connie the Condom. Kate's relentless questioning reveals that Sam had been at odds with Martina, his institute's director, over a lucrative buyout offer. She also discovers a bewildering variety of other motives. Kate's gag-gift business, Jest gifts, seems a perfect metaphor for this offbeat, tongue-in-cheek and endlessly appealing mystery, which will leave readers energized and blissed.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Eighth in this only-in-California series featuring Kate Jasper, inventor and merchandiser of antic gift items (Most Likely to Die, 1996, etc.). Kate and restaurant owner/fianc‚ Wayne Caruso are enrolled in a Wedding Ritual seminar run by bouncy Yvonne O'Reilley. Unconventional ceremonies are observed by class participants before they plan their own nuptials. Among others in Kate's group are grandiose guru Sam Skyler, head of the Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation; his gorgeous fianc‚e Diana Atherton; Diana's mother Liz; Sam's son Nathan and his statuesque lover Martina--both active at the Institute; funeral director Tessa and her soon-to-retire policeman Ray Zappa. The members of the seminar are gathered at the top of a craggy cliff to watch an undersea wedding on the beach when Kate spies Sam's body spread- eagled on the rocks below. The police call it murder, and, aware of Kate's past crime-solving exploits, Diana asks her to help with the investigation. In the end, the solution owes nothing to Kate's efforts, but before it's arrived at the reader is treated to a spate of New Age phenomena--Tantric yoga, tai chai, vegetarianism, and a panoply of guruisms from finger puppets to slogans like ``Grief Into Growth.'' Kate's in perpetual motion here; the scene itself has some amusing moments, though the story, except for the exotic trimmings, remains stubbornly unexciting. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

One misty morning on a seaside cliff, amateur sleuth Kate Jasper and her betrothed, Wayne, along with five other couples, are watching an aquatic wedding as part of their class, "Create Your Own Wedding Ritual." Just after all the characters have been introduced (and at least a mild antipathy to self-help guru Sam Skyler revealed), Skyler is pushed over the cliff. It's hard to feel much sympathy for a man whose means of helping people was putting little cloth puppets on his fingers, each of which represented a core emotion. But the accent here is on fun, not remorse, and fun there is as Kate makes her way through a New Age galaxy of characters who do plenty of manifesting, channeling, and sharing--but who fail to supply the right answer to whodunit. Until the end, of course. A witty bit of lightweight detecting. Ilene Cooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0425156303
• ISBN 13: 9780425156308
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 277