Rich, Radiant Slaugh

Bought book five first and had to own the rest. The first three are (in order): Sweet, Savage Death; Wicked, Loving Murder; and Death's Savage Passion. The fifth Patience "Pay" Campbell McKenna book is Once And Always Murder. Like the previous books, Rich, Radiant Slaughter gives the reader a hard eyed-look at what writers must endure, particularly romance writers. This time Pay and her best friend, best-selling romance writer Phoebe Damereaux, are part of a book tour to benefit the homeless. The tour is complicated by Phoebe's morning sickness and -- of course -- murder. Make that plural. Is the killer the dangerous popular author, Christopher Brand, who once stabbed a bookstore clerk in Tacoma (with a penknife)? How about the filthy rich Jonathon Lowry with the interesting method of avoiding having to pay income tax? Perhaps you favor the holier-than-thou Tempesta Stewart? Pay thinks her eight-year-old adopted daughter, Adrienne, is too young to be around murder. Adrienne disagrees, but the killer is going to put a lot of people in grave danger before the story's end. As with the other books in this series, the descriptions are delightful. Perhaps a couple will help you decide if this book is for you: "She was dressed in full Phoebe Damereaux regalia that morning, even though it was barely seven o'clock and we were on a train. Floor-length jade-green velvet caftan, nine strands of twenty-four-inch rope diamonds, diamond globe earrings big enough to use as crystal balls, ostrich feather hair combs in her wiry black hair: at the terminal in Baltimore there would be press, and Phoebe would be ready for them.""The mainstream press likes to pain romance writers as pink, fluffy little things, with dithering brains and vague smiles and a passionate desire to please. Amelia Samson was five-ten and weighed two-forty. She had spent her twenties running a mangle in a steam laundry, in the days before all that was automated. The muscular development of her shoulders and upper arms was awesome. She looked like a linebaker--or would have, if she hadn't been wearing a beaded Worth traveling suit just as well-armored and well-constructed as she was herself. Christopher Brand worked out with weights two hours a day seven days a week. Amelia could have crumpled him up like a piece of paper."If the copy you buy doesn't have the dust jacket, don't worry. You won't have missed much. The dark background had a rectangle with a pair of blue-fingered hands inside. Each forefinger had a blue beam like a searchlight coming from it and the beams crossed each other. Yawn.