From Publishers Weekly
In what appears to be a sly send-up of series protagonists, amateur sleuth Kate Jasper tells her psychic friend, Barbara Chu, that she fears she may be "karmically impaired" because whenever she joins a group of people, "someone drops dead." Barbara decides to convince Kate otherwise by luring her to a psychic soiree. But of course one of the blindfolded off-beat participants is surreptitiously garroted during an "exercise in intuition." Finding the killer in a group of psychics, visionaries and channelers would seem to be easy, but this doesn't turn out to be the case. Kate is flummoxed when her old adversary, Chief Wenger, arrives with an eager young lieutenant who is well read in the psychic arts and wants to use pop psychology to solve the crime. Wenger would prefer to pin the deed on Kate, Barbara or Kate's lover, Wayne, but he can't find enough evidence to support an arrest. Kate is reluctant to join in the investigation, but Barbara is determined to crack the case. As Barbara drags her to interview suspects, Kate tries to prevent Wayne, who is laid up in bed with pneumonia, from finding out that she's endangering her life yet again. Girdner's (When Death Hits the Fan, etc.) outlandish, droll sense of humor, filtered through narrator Kate's Alice-in-Wonderland na?vet?, eases the story along. Despite the hijinks and careful manipulation of reader suspicions, however, the plot develops too slowly to build proper suspense. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Because her friend Barbara Chu is worried that Kate Jasper's habit of walking into rooms full of people only to see one of them die might be a karmic impairment, Kate agrees to accompany her to black lesbian psychic Justine Howe's for a session. Naturally, Barbara and Kate walk in on a room full of a dozen peopleKate is #13and, naturally, they immediately arrange a sance, with ten of the participants sitting blindfolded in a circle, Justine's nephew Zarathustra and her sweetie, animal psychic Linda Underwood, chatting outside, and designated observer Denise Parnell, the tightly wound radio host of the alternative-lifestyle talk show Acceptance, off in the bathroom. Guess what happens. The latest victim of Kate's Typhoid Mary curse (Death Hits the Fan, 1998, etc.), florid seductress Silk (ne Polly Esther) Sokoloff, had said enough to offend everyone present, but was her tackiness sufficient motive for strangling her with a cat toy? What do the Paloma cops hope to learn by asking all the participants for their Myers-Briggs personality types and such psychic gobbledygook as enneagrams? And, since this sort of interrogation leaves plenty of room for novelty-store owner Kate's tenth dip into homicide investigation, what can she hope to discover that the alert constabulary can't? Largely ignoring the delicious absurdity of a roomful of clueless psychics, Girdner concentrates on painting each suspect and incident in the broadest Day-Glo strokes. The result, untainted by the slightest breeze of reality, is bustling but as lifeless as Silk. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Jaqueline Girdner's Kate Jasper novels have been widely acclaimed for their lively humor and tantalizing tales of murder and deception. Now, in Murder on the Astral Plane, amateur sleuth Kate Jasper joins forces with her psychic friend to find out why she always seems to end up face-to-face with a dead body. Once again, Girdner presents the hilarious wit and cleverly original plot that make this series so irresistible.


Download Description
Amatuer detective Kate Jasper is forced to rely on her own perceptions to get a clear vision of a killer.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jaqueline Girdner's Kate Jasper novels have been widely acclaimed for their lively humor and tantalizing tales of murder and deception. Now, in Murder on the Astral Plane, amateur sleuth Kate Jasper joins forces with her psychic friend to find out why she always seems to end up face-to-face with a dead body. Once again, Girdner presents the hilarious wit and cleverly original plot that make this series so irresistible.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Because her friend Barbara Chu is worried that Kate Jasper's habit of walking into rooms full of people only to see one of them die might be a karmic impairment, Kate agrees to accompany her to black lesbian psychic Justine Howe's for a session. Naturally, Barbara and Kate walk in on a room full of a dozen people—Kate is #13—and, naturally, they immediately arrange a séance, with ten of the participants sitting blindfolded in a circle, Justine's nephew Zarathustra and her sweetie, animal psychic Linda Underwood, chatting outside, and designated observer Denise Parnell, the tightly wound radio host of the alternative-lifestyle talk show Acceptance, off in the bathroom. Guess what happens. The latest victim of Kate's Typhoid Mary curse (Death Hits the Fan, 1998, etc.), florid seductress Silk (née Polly Esther) Sokoloff, had said enough to offend everyone present, but was her tackiness sufficient motive for strangling her with a cat toy? What do the Paloma cops hope to learn by asking all the participants for their Myers-Briggs personality types and such psychic gobbledygook as enneagrams? And, since this sort of interrogation leaves plenty of room for novelty-store owner Kate's tenth dip into homicide investigation, what can she hope to discover that the alert constabulary can't? Largely ignoring the delicious absurdity of a roomful of clueless psychics, Girdner concentrates on painting each suspect and incident in the broadest Day-Glo strokes. The result, untainted by the slightest breeze of reality, is bustling but as lifeless as Silk.