Coached in the Act

Near the start of bestseller Laurie’s amusing third mystery featuring life coach Catherine Cooper (after 2020’s To Coach a Killer), Catherine, who’s described by her personal assistant and best friend, Gilley Gillespie, as the “envy of divorcées everywhere... with two kids in boarding school, a sexy boyfriend, and all the money a person could want,” has an appointment with a new client, Aaron Nassau, “a member of the Danish royal family, currently sixteenth in line for the throne,” at her office in East Hampton, N.Y. Aaron is having trouble moving on from a brief romance with a woman who’s now ghosting him. Later that evening, Catherine and Gilley attend actor Yelena Galanis’s juicy one-woman show, Twelve Angry Men, a cruelly humorous exposé of “twelve rich and powerful East Hamptonites she’d used and abused over the years.” When Yelena is murdered during the intermission, Aaron becomes a suspect. Certain of his innocence, Catherine and Gilley investigate, much to the chagrin of Catherine’s love interest, Det. Steve Shepherd. Laurie smoothly mixes eccentric characters and gossipy backstories with sufficient plot complications. This is quick and easy reading for cozy fans. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich, & Bourret. (Sept.)