good @ housewife involves herself in murder

Judith is smart and funny, with a gorgeous husband and wonderful kids. She's also incredibly bored, having put her Ph.D. plans on hold for a life of housekeeping and nose-wiping. So when a local dentist is found murdered, and the police suspect her neighbor, that's all the excuse Judith needs to jump in and begin her own investigation.

Judith Singer is a mid-thirties bored housewife living in the New York suburbs. When she learns the local periodontist has been murdered it’s the most exciting thing to ever happen in her neighborhood so she takes an active interest in all the news. When she learns he was also sleeping with half the women she knows and possibly blackmailing them, she decides to do some sleuthing among her friends and neighbors. Her stuffy husband vigorously discourages her investigation, but she continues to pursue it. She also meets a police detective who complicates her life more than a bit.


This is Susan Isaacs’s first book, written in the mid-seventies and it had a slightly dated feel for me. The plot was very funny at several points and Judith’s Jewish angst made it even funnier. The author did a great job of conveying the bored suburban housewife of the 70s but ultimately I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I don’t plan to read the sequel (After All These Years) which takes place twenty years later.
( )

It's unusual for me to see the movie before I read the book but that's what happened. I loved the movie so I looked for the book. I shouldn't have been surprised that they were different but I enjoyed both.
( )

also liked magic hour and most of her early stuff ( )

Early desperate-housewife-detective-chicklit set on Long Island, and much funnier if you've been there as it riffs on all the Married to the Mob plasticity. (I was working in Manhasset when I first read it.) Pretty decent plot. Portrait of suburban marriage is a Mad Men time capsule, provides justification for joyous affair.