The first day Juliet sleeps for the whole two hours while Fraydle takes Isaac out in his stroller. When she awakens, Juliet sees Fraydle with a young man. She learns nothing more than his name, Yossi; Fraydle is obviously uncomfortable speaking about him.

The second day Fraydle fails to appear. Juliet returns to the grocery store to find it closed. Fraydle’s sister tells her Fraydle is missing. Fraydle is the daughter of a rabbi and one of a large family within the Los Angeles Hasidic community. Her father is angry that his daughter has had any contact with a non-Orthodox woman, even a Jewish woman, and Juliet is soon hustled out.

Fraydle was to be married to the son of an important New York rabbi. Could she have run away from the arranged marriage? Her family will not report her disappearance to the police; they will handle it themselves. Juliet realizes that Fraydle’s family does not know about Yossi so sets out to see if she can locate him and track down Fraydle.

Juliet will juggle the responsibilities of motherhood and the not-all-imaginary indignities of postpartum womanhood as she pursues unexpected leads all the way to New York.

Written in the first person, The Big Nap is the second Mommy-Track mystery written by Ayelet Waldman, herself a former public defender and stay-at-home mom married to a writer. The mystery itself is not wholly successful, but the comical outlook on the joys and agonies of motherhood is a hoot.

Regular detective mystery readers will be familiar with the deliberate, well-thought course of investigation most sleuths - amateur and professional - pursue on their way to solving the crime. Juliet’s investigation is definitely not of that tradition. Clues and informants practically fall into her lap. She is an unobservant Jew married to a lax Protestant, but Juliet most conveniently has contacts within the tightly closed Hasidic community. Her waitress at a restaurant just happens to be working as a server at an exclusive show business party and to live in the same apartment building as Yossi. Juliet repeatedly is the recipient of confidences from near-strangers who would have good reason to divulge little or nothing. Moreover, the ultimate solution to the whodunit comes to her in a sudden moment of insight. Readers who enjoy solid, reasoned police procedural mysteries may find The Big Nap too disjointed for their taste.

What makes The Big Nap such fun to read is Juliet’s off-beat commentaries on motherhood, breastfeeding, relatives, weight gain, postpartum sex (or the paucity thereof), maternal guilt, and similar topics. For those of us who have been there done that, there’s much to appreciate here. Based on my experience, it’s definitely a book more likely to appeal to a female audience than male. I read a few hysterically funny lines to my husband, and he didn’t crack a smile.

For readers looking for a light, entertaining book with a quirky sense of humor who won’t mind a somewhat erratic mystery, this might be a good choice.

--Lesley Dunlap