Book Review--Dating is Murder, by Harley Jane Kozak

This is the second book in the series featuring Wollie Shelley, greeting card designer and amateur sleuth. Wollie is also a contestant on a cheesy reality show called Biological Clock, featuring three women in their 30s and three men. Each of the three women has on-camera dates with each of three men, and then the audience votes on which combination should produce a child (with or without romantic involvement). Like I said, cheesy. Wollie is more or less participating for the $500 per week, for only two nights worth of work.

Her main concern is her missing friend Annika, a college exchange student from Germany who is also Wollie's math tutor. Wollie becomes concerned when Annika misses a tutoring session and then Annika's mother calls from Germany, saying that she hadn't heard from Annika for awhile, that her host family wouldn't return her calls, and that she was sure something was wrong.

Annika frequently hangs out on the Biological Clock set, so Wollie asks others on the set if Annika had said anything recently that might shed light on her disappearance. Disturbingly, she finds out that Annika had wanted to know how she could get a gun. Upon visiting Annika's host family, Wollie learns that Annika may have been involved with drugs. Both pieces of information are shocking to Wollie; Annika had hardly seemed like the type of person to want a gun or be involved with drugs.

Reporting Annika's disappearance to the police doesn't really do much good, and in investigating on her own, Wollie finds herself being followed. Actually, she is being followed by more than one person, some of whom have to do with the television show and trying to fix the results. You might say that Wollie's life has become rather scary on several levels.

This book was a lot better than the first book in the series, as I mentioned in my last post. Wollie is a very likeable character. Despite her tendency to get involved in some rather ridiculous projects (the TV show in this one and the dating "research" in the first book), she is actually quite intelligent and creative. I actually rather enjoyed the Biological Clock angle just because the show was so bad it was funny. Anyway, I imagine that there will be another book about Wollie, and I will most likely read it.