Murder by Death

Meh.  This one took a long time to catch my interest, but that was probably equal parts slow start and my complete disinterest in the character of Jaya's best friend Sanjay, the Hindi Houdini.  I love watching magic, but turn apathetic when faced with reading about it, and Sanjay has always stuck me as an immature egoist.  Jaya's sudden angst about a possible romantic entanglement with him was another strike against the story's tart; the amount of eye-rolling going on severely impacted my reading progress.

But the story does get better once, frankly, someone dies, and further improves soon thereafter when Jaya gets over the silly romantic I-have-to-find-myself nonsense.  This is about the time she starts paying more attention the history involved in the mystery and makes the connection that was insanely obvious to the reader from the start.

So the story improves and by the end definitely doesn't suck, but it's definitely not one of the series' better books.