She and her business partner Wes Westcott are enjoying a typical early-morning visit to an open-air farmers market, when Wes shows her an old Chinese case that stores lovely mah-jongg tiles. Wes found the case hidden in a fireplace behind a wall he’d torn down in a house he is renovating. He had bought the house from Quita McBride, the young widow of 1940s matinee idol Dickie McBride, who had died the year before.

Discovery of the mah-jongg case is serendipitous for Mad and Wes, who are preparing to cater that evening the meeting of the Sweet and Sour Mah-Jongg Club. This is a club of young, wealthy Hollywood insiders who have latched on to the latest trend of playing marathon rounds of the ancient Chinese game of strategy. Mad’s friend Buster, an in-demand music video director, organized and hosts the club and is Quita’s current boyfriend.

Mad and Wes are admiring the mah-jongg case and have uncover a thin book and a silver dagger hidden inside among the game tiles when Mad is mugged in the market. The mugger takes off with the case and with Mad in dogged pursuit. She ultimately recovers the case, but not the book or the dagger.

Wes has the unenviable job of explaining to the excitable Quita that the case he’d found in her former house and had promised to bring to her had been stolen and recovered but was being held by the police as evidence. But Quita’s anger upon hearing his and Mad’s story is even wilder than they had anticipated. Quita then suddenly turns fearful and begs them to take her in for the night, because she cannot return home until she has the case. She will not explain further. Mad gently refuses to shelter Quita for the night but gives her more than enough money to stay in a nice hotel.

Mad’s conscience troubles her; she is not accustomed to being inhospitable, so she asks her police officer friend, Chuck Honnett, to look into the strange matter of the stolen case and Quita’s odd behavior. But by morning, Quita is dead, her body having been found at the bottom of a tall set of cement stairs outside the house she shared with Buster.

Now Mad is driven to unmask Quita’s killer, all the while juggling her business, her self-centered boyfriend and the attractive lieutenant Honnett, whom she’s kept on the romantic back burner for too long, as she investigates Buster, the Sweet and Sour club members and a cadre of old-Hollywood stars who were Dickie’s contemporaries. She quickly learns that any of these suspects might have killed to protect a shameful secret.

Like its Hollywood setting, Dim Sum Dead is more surface than depth. The murder mystery is but an airy backdrop to the main feature, which is the ragout of Mad’s life: her lovers - ex and next - her partner, his renovation project, her unconventional employees and her fateful encounters with two small children.

This writer is very good at tweaking the many Southern California mannerisms and vanities. And though no recipes are provided, from her descriptions of the foods Mad prepares and serves, it’s clear the writer knows a thing or two about fine dining and catering. It is especially fun to learn about mah-jongg, its intricacies, legends and lore.

This novel is inconsequential but fun and knowing. Let those readers who like the challenge of a more complex mystery and more compelling characters be forewarned: Dim Sum Dead may be too light a soufflé for your tastes.

--Lillian Jackson