Dial Om For Murder
Mantra for Murder series
Diana Killian
Berkley 2009

Dial Om For Murder has a fun title going for it but that’s it. The second installment in the Mantra For Murder mysteries very, very slowly goes nowhere. This cozy is marketed to fill the yoga mystery niche but anyone who knows anything about yoga will discover the author got most of what little information she uses out of some For Dummies book. The main character is annoying and the secondary characters not really more than types.  As for the murder, you quickly do not care.

TV series star Nicole Manning asks new yoga studio owner A.J. to phone her. When A.J. gets to the Manning residence, Manning is dead. A.J. who in the first Mantra For Murder book Corpse Pose solved her aunt’s killing is slowly drawn into solving this one. Potential murderers include personal assistant Bryn Tierney, Manning’s boyfriend, an angry woman formerly president of Manning’s fan club, and Barbie Siragusa, the wife of an imprisoned mobster and the woman on whom Manning based her TV series.

Secondary stories in Dial Om for Murder include A.J.’s former husband Andy who may be hiding from his boyfriend, conflicts with Lilly who sort of owns the yoga studio with A.J., and Jake, the detective on the case who is also her sort of boyfriend.

The thing is Diana Killian fails to make any of these characters interesting. Granted a cozy is supposed to be a light read but you should at least be interested in what happens and the nosy amateur detective. This is not the case for the second Mantra for Murder book

Perhaps this really is a yoga mystery: your mind goes blank while you read Dial Om For Murder.