Customer Reviews

A Playdate With Death (Mommy-track)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Waldman is maturing as an author. This book was a fast read, with a clever plot and mostly interesting characters. Unfortunately, one of the most interesting characters was the victim -- the heroine's personal trainer at the gym.

Juliet Applebaum, the heroine, is a Jewish version of Valerie Wolzien's WASP-y suburban heroine, Susan Henshaw. Both characters build their lives around home and family and are defined more by their roles than their three-dimensional personalities. However, Wolzien's characters are a little more appealing and the heroine a little more three-dimensional.

Here, the Hollywood setting recedes as Juliet gets embroiled in the victim's dysfunctional family -- or families. We learn a lot about human genetics along the way.

With Juliet emerging as a strong heroine, her screenwriting husband becomes a shadowy figure. The children are...well, typical screaming children.

This series isn't as deep as, say, the series by Nevada Barr or Marcia Muller. But I find myself waiting for the next book and enjoying an evening or two thoroughly immersed in what's happening.

Ayelet Waldman had a great idea when she came up with the idea for the "Mommy-Track" mysteries. The main character in this series is Juliet Applebaum, an attorney who has decided to be a stay-at-home mom. Between wiping up the assorted messes that her two toddlers are constantly making, ferrying her kids to school and playdates, and tending to her other assorted "mommy duties," Juliet solves murders. What has made this series enjoyable thus far is that Juliet is usually witty and self-deprecating and the mysteries have been fun.

Unfortunately, "A Playdate with Death," as brief as it is (a bit over 200 pages and undersized ones at that), is a chore to read. Gone is the humorous and easy-to-take Juliet, whose wisecracks are not particularly funny in this novel. Waldman has churned out a formulaic and labored mystery about the death of Juliet's personal trainer, Bobby Katz. Bobby appears to have shot himself, but Juliet suspects that he was murdered. Bobby was an easygoing guy who did not seem to be at all suicidal, and for some reason, Juliet feels compelled to solve the mystery herself.

In the course of her investigation, Juliet barges in on all of Bobby's friends and relatives, including both the parents who adopted him and his birth mother. One of the ridiculous conventions of this type of book is that Juliet has no standing at all in this investigation. She is not a private detective, she is not a police officer and she is not even related to Bobby. Since the police have ruled that Bobby's death is a suicide, the case has officially been closed. Yet, Juliet manages to pry information out of an assortment of people who do not have to say one word to her. Yet, of course, they give her all of the information that she needs to solve the crime.

Juliet's long suffering husband, Peter, puts up with her shenanigans, even though she is endangering both herself and her family with her "investigations." The formulas and conventions wouldn't bother me if the mystery itself were at all entertaining. Unfortunately, there is nothing compelling about this case nor is the uncovering of the murderer's identity particularly suspenseful or believable. If Waldman wants to get back on track, she needs to bring back the truly humorous Juliet Applebaum and she needs to craft a mystery with a little more bite and substance.

Poor Juliet Applebaum...she's a stay-at-home mom who's a little bored with her life. Fortunately, things keep cropping up to make her life more interesting. First, the director of the preschool she's trying to get her daughter into is mowed down in a hit-and-run (Nursery Crimes). Then, her babysitter disappears (The Big Nap). Now, her personal trainer has committed suicide...or has he? Juliet's determined to find out the truth.

The Mommy-Track mysteries are a great way to spend a couple of hours escaping from everyday life. Especially if that life involves Sesame Street and potty training.

I must applaud Ayelet Waldman for writing her mommy track series. Having recently moved, I found myself in a terrible case of reader's block. Nothing I picked up from bestsellers to old favorite authors seemed to interest me. But then I read an article abotu Wladman and her husband Michael Chabon, an author, and decided to try the first book in this series Nursery Crimes. And within the first five pages of that title, it was as if the character of Juliet Applabaum, her family and the murder of a nusery school headmisterss, reeled me in. Not with the completion of the third book in this series, A Playdate with Death, I can't wait to gobble down the rest of the titles in this series hoping it never ends.

Rachel is now the mother of a 2 year old son who is obsessed with guns and an almost 5 year olddaughter who would rather play games with mommy than play with her brother. Naturally the two of them are just about driving Juliet, a Harvard educated lawyer turned full time mother, up the walls.

As a diversion to being at home and losing some of those unwanted pregnancy pounds, Juliet has hired a personal trainer. Little does she know that doing sit ups and scissor kicks will lead her to investigating another murder and the world of genetic diseases. She never expected to show up for her session one day and find out that the young man who is supposed to whip her into shape committed suicide. With no obvious clues that this man was on the brink of emotional disaster and as Juliet thinks about this young man, she knows she won't rest easy till she determines this was a suicide and not a homicide. Now Juliet is off to discover what really happened.

From this point on the plot becomes a roller coaster ride focusing on the parents and family of this young man who was adopted, but never knew it. When Juliet learns that the young man recently found out he carrried Tay Sachs, a genetic disorder prevalent among Eastern European Jews, it is apparent that more than one person found out about this and felt threatened. But who this was and why they felt it necessary to mruder him and make it look like a suicide is what confounds Juliet and readers alike. The book had me hloding my breath till the end which foudn all of the pieces fitting and I closed the book with a satisfied sigh.

As a stay at home Mom of 2 I loved this book. It was perfect for the short spans I can find in my day to read. The story was involving and fun. I am looking forward to reading more books by this author. Written for Moms as only a real Mom could. Thanks Ayelet!!

Ayelet Waldman improves with each entry in this series. In this episode, Juliet Applebaum's trainer commits suicide...or is it suicide? Juliet feels something amiss and begins delving into his background, including his adopted family, his birth mother, his drug-addicted fiancee.
I enjoy these books because the author does a great job of mixing mystery with day-to-day life without compromising the realism of either. I am glad that she is involving Juliet in the private detective business of her friend Al, because in many series there occurs a disbelief when a "normal" person (one outside the private detective or police world, for example) runs across too many murders.
Looking forward to the next entry.

I'm an avid mystery reader (PD James, D Sayers, R Hill) and enjoy Waldman's series immensely. Characters come across, even with brief descriptions and the dialogue is full of things I wish I'd have the chutzpah to say myself. I picked up 'Playdate' and didn't put it down until I was done.
As a new mom I relate totally to Juliet Applebaum (what mother wouldn't?!) and I greatly appreciate the lack of blood and gore. Many mystery writers rely on these devices to hold audience interest but Waldman never sinks to this level, instead relying on factual revelations and character analysis to further the plot development. Granted, one won't find a Dalglieshian tortured soul expounding on human philosophy while quoting WH Auden, but for an enjoyable, quick-paced humorous read I would recommend this book and series highly.

OK, I have to say it: I didn't think I'd ever be reading a mystery novel, let alone one with a detective who's also a mom with all of the issues moms have, but when I heard Ayelette Waldman on "All Things Considered" on NPR the other day she was so funny & warm & human, I figured the Juliet Appelbaum books had to be good. ANd was I ever right! Few books, let alone genre novels, let alone SERIES, offer as much smarts & fun as this one did: Juliet is a detective with a great twist: she has all the 'issues' that many women have, and the author brilliantly blends the necessary 'mystery' elements with an extra dimension of a mom being driven crazy, every now and then, by her kids. A MUST READ FOR WORKING MOTHERS!

I enjoyed this one, I think it's better overall than Waldman's second book, The Big Nap, because the plot doesn't seem as unbelievable. Stay-at-home-mom Juliet is getting bored with the routine, and manages to get herself involved in another questionable death, that of her personal trainer. While
his death appears to be a suicide, that doesn't fit either his upbeat personality or his recent actions before dying (such as ordering electronics over the Internet). Also, the two and a half year old, Isaac, comes along for some of the interrogations; while this might seem unbelievable at first, as a stay-at-home myself I found it realistic.

Okay, it's well-written, it's fun to read, but I did figure out the twist before I should have, when Juliet gets a threatening phone call (I won't spoil it here), and Ruby seemed oddly flattened in this book. After building Ruby up as stubborn and difficult in the first two books, and continuing to describe her that way in one section toward the end as a analogy for Juliet's own behavior, the 4-year-old child is completely cooperative in the book and in other sections is described as obedient and polite.

Perhaps I'm unfairly comparing this book to the other ten mysteries I read in the course of the past week, written by Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich; alas, Ayelet Waldman is not in their league (and few writers are). Waldman also referenced Sue Grafton as a role model in the acknowledgements, and maybe she's closer to Grafton than the other two (because I think Grafton, while rather compelling, isn't as interesting or complete in the way she fills in background and character). And unlike in her first two books, I feel Waldman here forgot to work on background because I got no sense of place in Playdate. It could have easily taken place in Las Vegas, Louisville, or Little Rock instead of Los Angeles. I wanted to taste the acrid tang of the smog, feel the curves of the Pacific Coast Highway, or be stuck in the snarl of the 405 knowing that there are six different routes home and none are any faster. Instead Juliet deals with an unsympathetic barrista at Starbucks, an Jewish family who disdains nonachievement, and a Catholic family who snub social inferiors; again, nothing about these people that requires them to live or die in L.A.

Though I learned nothing new about the Southland or its denizens, there was a moderately interesting subplot about genetic disease, testing, and populations. Since a major plot point concerns the search by Juliet's (murdered? suicided?) personal trainer for his birth parents, there's a discussion of Tay-Sachs disease and I discovered there is another subgroup at risk to this genetic disorder that I'd never heard about before. While I always enjoy learning obscure information in my mysteries, perhaps others will find it either tedious or distracting.

Still, definitely great beach reading, satisfying ending, and some further evolution of the main character as her children grow up.

I had the bad idea of picking up this book for a long flight, knowing nothing about its author. It turned out to be worse than the airline food. The writing is truly awful, clumsy yet full of conceit. The plot and the characters seem lifted from things you've read somewhere else but much better realized. I confess I was quite surprised that something like this got published. That's the only real mystery about this profoundly mediocre, boring and superfluous novel.