Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge (A Jaine Austen Mystery)

I m crazy about Laura Levine s mystery series. Her books are so outrageously funny.
Joanne Fluke

Freelance writer Jaine Austen is feeling festive about spending Christmas house-sitting at a posh Bel Air mansion, accompanied by her friend Lance and her cat, Prozac. But when a grumpy neighbor gets himself iced, she ll have to find the culprit or she may spend the New Year in jail . . .

Scotty Parker is a former child star who once played Tiny Tim, but now he s grown up into the role of neighborhood Scrooge. He cuts the wires on his neighbors Christmas lights and tells local kids that Santa had a stroke. And his miserly, bah-humbug attitude lasts year-round a fact known all too well by his current wife, his ex-wife, his maid, and many more.

Scotty thinks he can stage a comeback with the screenplay he s working on (The Return of Tiny Tim: Vengeance Is Mine!), and Jaine s been reluctantly helping him edit it. So when Scotty is bludgeoned with a frozen chocolate yule log and the police start making a list of suspects and checking it twice, Jaine s name is unfortunately included. True, she s been under some stress, with Lance trying to set her up on dates and her fickle feline taking a sudden liking to someone else but she s not guilty of murder. Now she just has to prove it, by using her gift for detection and figuring out who committed this holiday homicide.