Kate Jasper Mystery series by Jaqueline Girdner (#1-12)
Requirements: epub reader, 4 MB
Overview: Jaqueline Girdner lives, works, practices tai chi, and eats her vegetables in Marin County, California, along with her favorite computer peripheral, Famous Spouse Gregory Booi.
Genre: Mystery
1. Adjusted to Death (1991)
Kate Jasper visits her chiropractor for a simple spinal adjustment but, instead, finds a dead man on one of the tables—dead of a broken neck. Maggie, Kate’s friend and chiropractor, has known Scott Younger for years, as has her staff. Her receptionist, Renee, even dated him. Devi knew Scott from college. Guru-follower, Valerie, accuses Scott of being a drug pusher! And Wayne, Scott’s now unnecessary bodyguard, a shy, homely man who almost makes Kate forget her husband has left her, knew him the best of all. But Kate can’t forget murder, especially since Wayne is the main suspect. And there’s the pesky matter of Kate’s fingerprints on the metal bar that broke Scott Younger’s neck. Kate Jasper’s in for a spine-tingling, bone-chilling adventure.
2. The Last Resort (1991
Kate Jasper has finally divorced her husband, Craig, and is enjoying a platonic friendship with her now ex-husband, happy in her own new love life. The bad news is that Craig has been dating his divorce attorney, Suzanne Sorenson. Suzanne is everything Kate isn’t: tall, blonde, elegant, ambitious, and ruthless. And now, Suzanne is dead as well, strangled on her late night jog while vacationing with Craig at a vegetarian health resort. Craig is suspected of Suzanne’s murder by the local police. Craig figures since she solved a murder before, she can solve this one, and begs Kate to help exonerate him. Kate reluctantly agrees and checks herself into Spa Sante to investigate. Raw vegetables were never so dangerous.
3. Murder Most Mellow (1992)
Kate Jasper is doing some soul-searching after a messy homicide case involving her ex and a breakup with her boyfriend over the "M" word—in this case that’s marriage, not murder. She decides to tap into some positive energy by hosting a support group. Where? In her hot tub, of course.
4. Fat-Free and Fatal (1993)
Kate Jasper’s been on edge ever since her significant other’s meddling mother moved in. So she decides that getting out of the house for a vegetarian cooking class will be good for her mental and physical health. Then one of the students is choked to death, and the police suspect Kate’s friend, Barbara. But Kate finds that hard to swallow. Now she has to find a killer whose favorite recipe is murder—before she’s dead meat herself.
5. Tea-Totally Dead (1994)
Kate’s sweetie has finally moved his malevolent mother, Vesta, out of their house and into her own condo. But Vesta uses her new home to host a family reunion for each and every member of her extended family. Attendance is compulsory, even for Kate. Vesta baits, insults, and slanders all the guests except her UFO-abductee roommate, Harmony, until after-dinner tea time. Vesta can’t interest anyone else in her private blend of herbal tea, which gives off the pungent bouquet of brewed sweat socks. Lucky for them, since the tea also has an extra infusion of poison that evening. By the following morning, Vesta is as dead as any affection her family might have held for her. And Kate tries to find the real fiend of the family.
6. A Stiff Critique (1995)
Kate is considering writing something besides jokes on the sides of coffee mugs for her gag gift company, Jest Gifts. To her own embarrassment, the stuff she’s writing is poetry. She joins a writers’ critique group with her friend Carrie, hoping for sensitive support. But the group criticisms are more cruel than supportive, especially the verbal abuse from successful thriller novelist Slade Skinner (born Sherman Francis Skinner), uttered with condescension as he pumps a dumbbell up and down. When Slade is found face down on his keyboard with the bloody dumbbell beside him, no one seems surprised by the poetic justice. After all, writing is murder. But Kate wants the real story on the killing, before someone in the group plots the next chapter.
7. Most Likely to Die (1996)
Kate’s twenty-fifth high school reunion was bad enough, but the post-reunion barbecue for the old gang was a real shock. Kate lends her own pinball machine, "Hot Flash," to Sid Semling the week before his barbecue party. Sid, master prankster and live wire, does his own wiring on the pinball machine so it spews sexist menopausal insults as fast as he does. But when he steps up to play pinball at the party, it zaps the jokes right out of him. The machine’s been rigged for electrocution, and Kate scores as the primary suspect. Everyone was annoyed by Sid, but it was Kate’s pinball machine that made him the first man to die from a Hot Flash. She must short-circuit the real culprit before she becomes the next most likely to die.
8. A Cry for Self-Help (1997)
Kate Jasper and her sweetie take the plunge and join a Wedding Ritual Class, hoping to find inspiration for their own possible nuptials. On a field trip to observe a scuba-diving marriage ceremony, Sam Skyler, the man who has become a living legend as a human-potential guru, isn’t propelled into marriage, but is instead pushed over an oceanside cliff to his death. Sam Skyler practiced finger puppet therapy at The Skyler Institute for Essential Manifestation. He was purported to be a man of psychic sensitivity and personal genius. So how come he didn’t notice the person who pushed him? Kate is once again wedded to an inconvenient murder rather than to her sweetie. Can she get a simple annulment from the case—or will it be a fatal one?
9. Death Hits the Fan (1998)
Kate and her fiancé, restaurateur Wayne Caruso, visit Ivan Nakagawa’s bookstore for an author signing. The event features three authors, and only a few more audience members, but the small audience doesn’t stop Yvette Cassell from reading on and on as fellow author S.X. (Shayla) Greenfree’s eyelids droop and she slumps forward. Kate is shocked by Shayla’s novel approach to boredom. But it turns out that Shayla isn’t just dozing, she’s dead. Is the murderer’s unique signature the bracelet that Shayla snapped on before falling over? The police read an accusation into Shayla’s last utterance of "Kate, I…" before Shayla slumped, though Kate’s sure they never met. Who did it, Kate wonders—an obsessed fan? a disgruntled bookstore employee? She wants to find out—especially after the plot thickens with yet another murder.
10. Murder on the Astral Plane (1999)
Kate Jasper is feeling "karmically impaired." In her view, she carries an astral virus to any group she joins, always leaving someone just plain dead. Kate’s best friend, Barbara Chu, says Kate’s simply thinking negatively. Barbara practices a little metaphysical shock therapy by tricking Kate into participating in an unannounced psychic soiree. And sure as shooting stars, by the end of a blindfolded intuition exercise, Silk Sokoloff, author and columnist of Erotica, Et Cetera, has been fatally garrotted by a wire cat toy. Kate figures one of the clairvoyants, intuitives, or telepaths in the group should be able to figure out whodunit. But their collective psychic vision isn’t anywhere near 20/20. Now Kate needs her own crystal ball if she wants to die of old age rather than New Age.
11. Murder, My Deer (2000)
Kate Jasper and Wayne Caruso’s budding romance has finally flowered into a full-fledged marriage. But no one ever promised them a rose garden. Deer have gate-crashed their yard to munch every bud, blossom, and petal. Instead of happily honeymooning, Kate and Wayne attend the Deer-Abused support group for those whose dearly-beloved plants have been deerly beheaded. Antlers clash during group discussion since everyone has their own idea for deer prevention—from feeding them to killing them. Dr. Searle Sandstrom, ex-military, would like to use a gun, napalm, and land mines. But someone bashes in his head first, and no one spots any hoofprints near his dead body. Killing season is open, and Kate is game to flush out the hunter before she becomes the hunted game.
12. A Sensitive Kind of Murder (2002)
Kate Jasper has sworn off groups, tired of her role as the Typhoid Mary of Murder, but now her husband attends the Heartlink Men’s Group. Kate is on her way to meet him afterward when a familiar car roars down the street, hits Steve Summers (journalist and fellow Heartlink member), flings him into the air, and then backs up to run over him again. The familiar car is her husband’s muscular Jaguar. Kate is sure her own gentle and gentlemanly husband wasn’t driving the car at the fatal moment. But who was? Kate must break the Heartlink Men’s circle of silence and go where no woman has gone before. Her husband’s life may depend on Kate’s estrogen-fueled intuition.
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