How to murder your mother-in-law / Dorothy Cannell.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"In a flush of family feeling, Ellie Haskell decides to host an anniversary dinner party for her husband Ben's parents, Magdalene and Elijah. She has only the best of intentions in inviting a friend Magdalene hasn't seen in forty years. Beatrix Taffer is a seventy-year-old flower child - a vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables. And Magdalene certainly does not like the attention Elijah pays her ex-best friend throughout the evening." "Ellie is not surprised when dinner, along with the chocolate mousse, falls flat, but neither she nor Ben is prepared for the revelation of a dark and terrible secret and the monumental row that ensues. At evening's end Ellie is left with more than a sink full of dirty dishes. Elijah has moved out to seek lodging elsewhere and Magdalene has taken up residence in her dear son's home." "Nothing like a live-in mother-in-law to reduce a woman to the role of junior housemaid. Confronted with demands that Tobias, the cat, be put to sleep and Mrs. Malloy, the daily help, be given notice, Ellie discovers that misery does indeed love company. At the Dark Horse pub she meets up with three other wives, including the female vicar of St. Anselm's Church, all of whom suffer from the age-old mother-in-law curse. The ladies mix gin and tonics with homicidal fantasies - a soupcon of poison here, a broken brake line there." "All very therapeutic and no harm intended, Ellie doesn't have the time to rendezvous with Ben in the bedroom, let alone bump off his mother. But it soon becomes murderously clear that someone is only too happy to give her and the co-conspirators a hand. When one mother-in-law lands in the morgue and another is scheduled to end up on ice, Ellie realizes that she may have more to answer for than a chocolate mousse that failed to rise to the occasion." "Garnished with humor and spiced with danger, How to Murder Your Mother-in-Law is the perfect recipe for a mystery!"--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved