Killer Routine: a Last Laff mystery (M)
by
Alan Orloff

"Orloff's entertaining first in a new series set in the standup comedy
world immediately engages the reader's sympathies with the lead's tragic
backstory. Channing Hayes stopped performing after the car accident
that took the life of his fiancee, Lauren Dempsey, and left him scarred
and maimed. Hayes, now the co-owner of the Last Laff Comedy Club in
northern Virginia, has been encouraging Lauren's sister, Heather, to
make her solo appearance before the microphone. But the night of
Heather's debut, she disappears right before she's about to go on, a
puzzle that may be connected with a series of murders. Hayes's frantic
search for his almost-sister-in-law meets with relative indifference,
both from law enforcement and from family members familiar with
Heather's flaking out in the past. Despite a mundane solution to the
mystery, Orloff does a great job of evoking
smalltime, struggling comedy clubs" - Publisher Weekly
The Comedy is Finished (M)
by
Donald E. Westlake

"It's 1977. The Vietnam War and Watergate are very recent history.
Comedian Koo Davis, however, continues to do what he's been doing for
four decades: tell jokes. But just before the taping of his TV special,
Koo is kidnapped by the People's Revolutionary Army. The kidnappers
demand that 10 imprisoned radicals be given safe passage out of the U.S.
in return for Koo. The Comedy Is Finished is a tense, compelling story
of captive, captors, and an FBI agent, but it's also a painfully
insightful portrait of a very dark period in U.S. history. All the main
characters' lives have been affected by the war or Watergate, and
Westlake, who wrote the novel in the late 1970s, gives each plenty of
opportunity to lament what happened to them and relive some of this
country's darkest years. It's very different from Westlake's beloved
comic crime capers, and although readers old enough to remember those
years may find the memories dredged up to be unpleasant, they will
probably be hard-pressed to put the book down." - Booklist
Lucky Stuff (M)
by
Sharon Fiffer

"With her divorce final, Jane must clear out her antique collection and
sell her house. Now homeless, Jane heads to her hometown in Illinois to
find it, too, has been turned upside-down. Lucky Miller, a little-known
comedian, is staging a comeback. Suspicious, Jane's mother Nellie hires
Jane to investigate. Still, Nellie may be the least of Lucky's problems
when a driver on his crew turns up dead hours after claiming that Lucky
tried to kill him." - publisher
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