But much to Reggie's dismay, Mark isn't always batting for the same team.  He has a secret.  He's pulling an Ann Heche on Ellen DeGeneres.  He's pretending to be gay to become a star in Palm Beach.  Mark has a taste for the ladies...and that appetite will prove deadly.

Reggie realizes he's been had.  He angrily confronts Mark and reads him the prostitutional riot act.  Walkers don't sleep with clients!  And besides, I thought you liked MEEEEEEEE.  The two scuffle, which is serious business in public places in Palm Beach.  The cops won't have it.  Loud public brawls are so low, so un-trendy, so un-Veuve Clicquot.  What will the neighbors think? 

The two Walkers are escorted off the premises with Reggie's parting shot to Mark, "All I had to do is whisper in the right ear and he'd be dead in this town".

So when Mark turns up dead, dead, dead, it's obvious to the closed minded cops of Palm Beach whodunit.  None other than the betrayed and humiliated, Reggie Kent.

When the murder rap is pinned on Reggie, he calls in reinforcements and The Little Death becomes old home week for Louis Kincaid and Mel Landeta who reprise their friendship from Island of Bones.  The two men, with the help of an unwittingly recruited local cop, set out to find the real killer or killers.  A search that will lead them to the door of a lady-senator with an unusual sexual appetite.

For those of you who are virgins of the Louis Kincaid series--he is a figment and pigment of PJ Parrish's imagination.  He's a bi-racial cop turned private investigator who's licking his wounds from a bad break up.  That unrequited love will make him messy and endanger his life.  But the character of Louis Kincaid is a runaway favorite with fans who are devoted to this character because they love his humanity, flaws and his sometimes odd sense of justice. 

Louis is expertly written by Kristy and Kelly who you might consider, Y-chromosome-deprived and melanin-challenged.  Yet they nail the ego, the stature and the emotions of a black male perfectly--while juggling cop persona, procedure and authentic crime scene descriptions.  They are not just writing Louis, they are Louis.  And that's part of the fascination of the story.  Not only do the sisters...or should I say sistahs put you on the ground and in the middle of Palm Beach politics and classism, but if you dig a little deeper you might be fascinated by how the relationship has developed between Louis Kincaid, Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols aka PJ Parrish.  Kelly says, "When you create a character so totally opposite of yourself, you learn to live with dual personalities.  Over time, how your character--and in our case, how Louis reacts--becomes second nature."

But the intimate connection between the three wasn't always Crazy Glue strong.  "The early books were more difficult," Kelly goes on to say.  "Partly because we did not yet know our character intimately and partly because we were relying on classically stereotypical 'male' responses to situations.  We had to really challenge our own thinking about what is stereotypically 'male' and 'female' and rebuild from there."

And now with ten Louis Kincaid books under their collective belts they no longer have to guess at Louis's responses or his feelings or his heart.  They know him.  They know how he operates.  And he knows them.  They let Louis guide them.  He's become as much a tutor and friend as he is a smash-hit character in their books. 

These days Kristy's husband, Daniel, has regained his membership card into the Male Domesticus club, having long since given up the secrets about some of the things men do, and the mindset and vocabulary behind the activities unknown to the women in their lives that have the Female Domesticus species scratching its head.  And Kelly's multi-cultural family members can re-invite her to Thanksgiving dinner and family functions because she now knows more about Louis Kincaid than she has to ask.  "He is our teacher in a very real way," says Kelly.  "And that is what enables us to bring him, his past, his hopes, his dreams and his demons to life on the page."

It's fun to read women, writing about men, dealing with women.  And what you get from The Little Death is, women aren't the only ones who need to pay extra attention to whom they invite to share their pillows.

Ah the foibles of the extremely wealthy--are there really people like that?  You may ask yourself, as P.J. takes you onto the island that is Palm Beach.  These rich, bored broads who are more interested in current fashion than the suffering in Haiti.  The answer is unequivocally, yes!  And Kristy has had a front row seat.  The book's inspiration is snatched from Kristy's days as a Fort Lauderdale newspaper dance critic who had to make regular treks into the Bizzarro World that is Palm Beach to cover her beat way back when.  Way back then she was able to penetrate the perfume and the Prada to see how so many of these people really lived.  She was able to get into their heads and stay there long enough to make the ambiance of the book realistic.  You can see the colors and feel the air as Louis travels back and forth between the beautiful people and the cow pokes to prove Reggie Kent's innocence.

The fiction is not far from the facts.  When Louis gets a traffic citation for having an ugly car, it's really from the experience of Kristy, who, while covering the rich and powerful in Florida came to a gruesome realization.  In her first week living in South Florida in the 1980's, Kristy took some friends to Palm Beach to see the fancy homes and was pulled over because her rusted VW was an eyesore and her plates had expired.  The coppers let her off with a ticket, which inspired Louis's own "ugly car" ticket in the book.  Hilarious!

But the best ticket is scoring an early copy of The Little Death.  It's a fast, fun read with devilish details and a fresh twist to murder.  These bestselling authors of South of Hell and Dark of the Moon get high praise from the likes of Michael Connelly who says, "This is their best work, yet".

What's next for PJ Parrish?  "We're taking a break from our series to do a stand alone," Kristy chimes in.  "It's a pure thriller that moves from Miami to Paris.  We're playing with some point of view and narrative techniques.  It's weird being away from Louis, like we're having an affair.  But we'll always come back to him". 

The Little Death will be released by Pocket Books Feb. 16, 2010.  You can read an excerpt at the author's website: www.pjparrish.com and take a virtual tour of the real locations in Palm Beach that inspired the story.

But start this murder mystery on a Friday, so life doesn't get in the way of reading.

Paula L. Tutman is an Emmy Award winning journalist and award winning author of DEADLINE!, currently working as a TV journalist in Detroit.  She has some 30 years in the news business, obviously beginning her career when she was six...no, make that three.  Using her background as a former police reporter, she weaves real life stories and experiences into compelling mystery thrillers.  Her second novel, part two of a series is due November 2009.