Nursery Crimes: 07/31/19

Nursery Crimes by Ayelet Waldman is the first of the Mommy-Track mystery series. Juliet Applebaum has given up being a public defender to be a stay at home mom. She's pregnant with her second child and she and her husband are trying to get their oldest, a daughter, into an elite preschool.

They don't manage to get their willful daughter into the preschool. Before they can try a different one, the school's principal is murdered in a hit and run. Juliet decides to track down the killer.

It's unusual for a modern cozy mystery — anything after the late 1960s — to feature a married woman. It's even rarer for a series to start off with the amateur sleuth being pregnant. Usually these series end on a pregnancy, such as The Whole Enchilada which ends the Goldy Bear Catering mystery series.

Over all I enjoyed the mystery and the relationship between Juliet, her husband, and their daughter. The only problem, and this is all on me, was I was binge watching Lucifer at the time I was reading this mystery. Juliette's daughter reminded me of Trixie and from there I was imagining an alternate world where Dan and Chloe were still married and she was a lawyer instead of a detective.

It was a fun start to a series, albeit with a somewhat predictable end. The second book is The Big Nap (2001).

Four stars

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