The Shape of Dread — Marcia Muller

PRIVATE EYE SHARON McCONE is enlisted into a case that had made lurid headlines ten years earlier: it was then that Bobby Foster, ex-crack addict and parking valet at the trendy Cafe Comedie, confessed to the kidnapping and murder of young stand-up comic Tracy Kostakos.

Foster's lawyer at the All Souls Legal Cooperative thinks that the real story didn't come out at the trial. After all, the body was never found.

Assigned to dig up additional facts, Sharon finds that Kostakos's co-comics had been strangely silent during the investigation. Was Tracy really the "good girl" her parents thought? And weren't the socially aware real estate developers who own the club just a bit too smooth?

Sharon's quiet investigation into the hip stand-up comedian subculture soon leads to explosive revelations about the darker side of comedy.