SURVIVAL INSTINCTS (Nina Fischman Series) - Hardcover

Things are not exactly looking up for Nina Fischman--recently split from her boyfriend, unemployed, back living with her mother in Manhattan, and at 40, feeling that perhaps her best years are behind her (and even those weren't so great). Quietly slipping into compromised complacency, she is suddenly jolted back to life by--what else?--a murder mystery. To add to the intrigue, a prime suspect is her brother-in-law, who not only worked with the recently departed, but just happened to be involved in a lucrative real estate deal with him, so guess who now owns the property? Motive? You bet. But there is also the animal-rights group who had targeted the late scientist for his treatment of lab animals, and even his widow had her reasons. At times funny and consistently quirky, Survival Instincts is a fun read that keeps the reader guessing.

Nina Fischman's back from her abortive trek to L.A. with Jonathan Harris, sans man, sans job, sans pride (she has to move in with her mother, for crying out loud). But when her mild brother-in-law, Ken Rubin, is implicated in the poisoning of his real-estate partner, Andy Campbell, Nina (Alternate Sides, 1995, etc.) has herself another crime-solving gig, this time under cover of helping her successful ``friend'' Ellen Simon research a story for the New Yorker. Though there's nothing very mysterious about the case--Roz Brillstein, Andy's flashy widow, blames the animal-rights activists of SPASM (the Society for the Protection of All Small Mammals) who were protesting Andy's experiments with lab rats, though Andy's former partner, who became former after bedding down with Roz, looks equally suspicious--it does bring Nina together with dishy SPASM executive director Peter Slater (``even this guy's knuckles looked good''), give her a chance for a showdown with the killer and her no-nonsense mom, and leave her with her hair dyed and an unexpected new job. As usual, the lame mystery is an excuse for some laugh-out- loud chatter and Piesman's uniquely astringent insights into family relations (``In Jewish families, people generally avoided saying anything nice to each other. It was some sort of incest taboo''). -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.