Friday, January 3, 2014

"Killing Cupid"

Laura Levine is a former sitcom writer whose credits include The Bob Newhart Show, Laverne & Shirley, The Jeffersons, The Love Boat, Three’s Company, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. As an advertising copywriter, she created Count Chocula and Frankenberry cereals for General Mills. Her work has been published in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

In her latest (and favorite) incarnation as a mystery novelist, she has been an IMBA paperback bestseller and winner of the RT Book Reviews award for Most Humorous Mystery.

Levine applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Killing Cupid, and reported the following:
On page 69 of Killing Cupid readers see Joy Amoroso, Matchmaker from Hell, in full-tilt tyrant mode, browbeating her employees as they get ready for their annual Valentine’s Day party. She screeches orders at them as they hang crepe paper (“Higher! No, lower! Now just a bit to the right! No, no! To the left! No, to the right again!”) Joy’s so cheap, she buys discount balloons and hires a caterer from Coachella prison. Then she buys the cheapest champagne she can find and has her assistant paste on phony Dom Perignon labels. All in all, Joy’s a most appalling gal, and it’s no surprise when the psycho cupid winds up dead—poisoned by one of her own Valentine’s chocolates—on page 87.
Visit Laura Levine's website.

--Marshal Zeringue