Short reviews of two books by Amy Korman, and one by J.J. Chow

I'll start with the J.J. Chow book, Seniors Sleuth.  Winston Wong is pudgy, smart, a little insecure, and a bit of a nerd.  No longer a game tester for video games, he decides to become a private investigator.  He puts an add in the local Pennysaver, and soon has his first client, a woman who wants a death at a nursing home to be proven a natural death.  Winston goes from clue to clue, changing his mind about the death, and possible suspects, until he inadvertently discovers the answer.  For a first book in a series, it wasn't too bad.

Killer WASPs is the first in a series by Amy Korman.  Kristin Clark is barely making her rent, running an antique store inherited from her grandparents.  She lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where almost everyone she is friends with is extremely well-to-do.  Her high school pal, Holly, is an heiress married to a very wealthy man in his own right, and her hobbies include shopping and looking good in clothes.  Another friend, Bootsy, is also well-to-do, a preppy married to a lawyer, and she works part time for the local paper, mostly as an excuse to gossip and snoop around and know everything that is going on. She is also friends with Joe, a good looking decorator, who would love to land a TV show.

One night, when walking her dog, she meets a handsome stranger, then they find a local real estate developer lying under a bush, unconscious.  He had been attacked by an unknown assailant, and with his shoddy workmanship and pushy ways, the list of suspects was overwhelming.  When the attacker strikes again, Holly and her friends decide to investigate before someone else is hurt. 

This was a fairly interesting and entertaining story, and I looked forward to reading the second in the series.

Killer Getaway is the second in the series, and isn't a bad story.  The group ends up in Florida, leaving the bad Pennsylvania winter behind, and end up investigating another mystery.  Two of their friends have opened a restaurant, Vicino's, and while they are there visiting, bad things begin to happen.  One of the owners bad-tempered ex-boyfriends arrives to open another restaurant directly across the street from Vicino's.  A bad batch of clams causes a patron to be violently ill, and being a local mover and shaker, she tells everyone in detail of her illness to discourage anyone else from going to the restaurant.  Then the restaurants air conditioning is destroyed.

The group of friends start investigating, and discover there are several possible villains in the area, and several different motives.

I enjoyed this story, except for one huge problem.  Early in the book the author refers back to the first book, doing a short recap, and identifying the perpetrator!  As I quite often read books out of order, I find this extremely annoying.  Luckily, in this instance, I had already read the first book, but I really don't understand why an author would do this.