Not only is Dorcas’s act a bomb, she is heckled by Vic, a gorgeous fellow comic who is equally good on stage and in the sack. Unfortunately Vic loves performing in both venues. He gets in bed with a sexy waitress, a pretty new lover, and a sweet girlfriend while professing his undying love for each. Worse, he is two-timing his aging agent. Pretty soon Vic has an enemy’s list a mile long, and when he needles Dorcas one time too many, she assaults him at a club’s open-mike night.

Naturally when Vic is murdered with Dorcas’s pantyhose and that same Dorcas is standing over his dead body, the police arrest…Dorcas. They figure it’s an open-and-shut case although Jaine figures no killer can be that dumb—even Dorcas. But when Jaine sets out to find the real culprit, she is distracted by one dating disaster after another with Andrew—and she may not see the dark side of comedy until she faces the business end of a gun and a cold, deadly grin…

Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek at
Laura Levine’s
DEATH BY PANTYHOSE
coming next month in hardcover!

Chapter 1

Ever have one of those days where everything seems to go your way, where the gods smile on your every move and good luck follows you around like an eager puppy?

Neither have I.

No matter how great things start out in my life, sooner or later something is guaranteed to hit the fan.

Take the day the whole pantyhose mess began. It started out smoothly enough. My cat, Prozac, waited until the civilized hour of 8 A.M. before swan diving on my chest to wake me up.

“Morning, pumpkin,” I murmured, as she nuzzled her furry head under my chin.

She looked at me with big green eyes that seemed to say, You’re my favorite human in all the world. (Well, not exactly. What they really seemed to say was, When do we eat? But I knew deep down, she loved me.)

When I looked out the window, I was happy to see that the early morning smog that hovers over L.A. for months on end had finally taken a powder. The sun was back in action, shining its little heart out.

Things got even better when I discovered a free sample of Honey Nutty Raisin Bits with my morning newspaper, which meant I didn’t have to nuke one of the petrified Pop Tarts in my freezer for breakfast.