Death Gets a Time-Out: 09/05/21

Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman is the fourth book in the Mommy Track mystery series. Juliet Applebaum's movie star friend, Lilly, needs her help in clearing her step-brother's name. He's been accused of murder.

Jupiter is accused of murdering his stepmother which has forced Lilly to face painful memories of possibly shooting her own mother when she was five. The clues to both deaths lie in an exclusive rehab center in Ojai.

The Ojai center and it's ties to a 1960s era cult bring to mind a more recent mystery I either read or watched as a police procedural. I've been wracking my brain trying to remember where I saw this plot. I can say with some certainty that Death Gets a Time-Out is the older of the plots.

The central theme in this mystery series is that everything comes down to family. While Juliet and Ian are struggling to build theirs, others have reached the breaking point. The murderer is usually a relative of the victim and that's the case here. It was also the obvious solution too from early on. The only question was, how did the modern day murder relate to the older one?

The fifth book in the series is Murder Plays House (2004).

Three stars

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