Dead Soon Enough: A Juniper Song Mystery

Cha wins the reader’s sympathies for her L.A. PI at the outset of her outstanding third Juniper Song mystery (after 2014’s Beware Beware). When at age 22 Song “was broke, bored, and quietly depressed, and had no strength to fight the call of easy money,” she decided to become an ovum donor and sold three sets of her eggs for $48,000. Years later, a new case revives memories of what for her was a questionable decision. Rubina Gasparian, a 37-year-old doctor who’s unable to conceive with her husband, has arranged for her 26-year-old cousin, Lusig, to serve as her gestational surrogate. With only a month to go before the due date, Rubina is anxious that Lusig isn’t taking care of either herself or the fetus, and she hires Song to follow Lusig. The gumshoe finds that Lusig’s main source of stress is anxiety about a friend who’s been missing for about a month, Nora Mkrtchian, the daughter of Armenian immigrants from the Soviet Union. Nora ran a website devoted to discussing the Armenian genocide of 1915, and her blog posts attracted a lot of creepy haters, so Song’s focus shifts from Lusig to ascertaining Nora’s fate. Veronica Mars fans will be pleased. Agent: Ethan Bassoff, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (Aug.)