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Ayelet Waldman's first mystery novel, "Nursery Crimes," was culled from her life as a former public defender and stay-at-home mother.

Three books into the series finds the author and her character, Juliet Applebaum, facing new challenges. In "A Playdate With Death," Waldman writes about issues outside of her experience, including adoptive children's rights and Tay-Sachs, a fatal genetic disorder that often affects Jewish families.

"I hope that I'm getting better with each one, that I'm learning more about the craft," she says during a recent visit to Pittsburgh to promote the third installment of her Mommy-Track mystery series.

When Waldman, the wife of novelist Michael Chabon, published her first book, her writing experience was limited to legal briefs and filings. She had never published a short story or poem, let alone a novel, but was looking for a challenge to replace her career as a public defender in Los Angeles.

Thus, Juliet Applebaum was born, a feisty ex-public defender with an insatiable thirst for setting the record straight. In "Playdate," Applebaum investigates the death of her fitness trainer, Bobby Katz, who is found dead in his car on the Pacific Coast Highway, a gun in his hand and a bullet in his head. The death is ruled a suicide, but Applebaum, at the request of Katz's girlfriend, finds evidence to the contrary.

"One of the most interesting things about this series is when Ayelet started out, there was almost no difference between her and Juliet," Chabon says. "But, as the books have gone on, their lives have completely separated, even though there are strong parallels. They're in very different places, and they do very different things with their families."

"She's got a much more typical, a much less involved, husband than I do," Waldman says. "And I have more children. I used to say she would just match me, and she will have three (children). But only psycho killers have four children. That would lose any sense of identification people have with her.

"You should see the looks I get now when people say, 'Oh, you're pregnant — is that your first baby?' and I say, 'No, it's my fourth.'"

In "Playdate," Waldman has increased the complexity of her story, adding issues concerning drug policy and gun laws in addition to adoption and genetic diseases. Her next two novels promise to be even more layered. One features Applebaum going into business as a part-time private investigator. Another is a stand-alone book tentatively titled "Nobody's Mother." About a mother whose daughter becomes involved with a drug dealer, it challenged the writer beyond the limits of her Mommy-Track series, Waldman says.

"That was pretty exciting, because I've said that I'm a mystery writer, that I write light, fluffy mysteries, and then I wrote this book that was so satisfying," she says. "It made me realize I could take Juliet further, too, that my next Juliet book could be more complicated. It would still have that lightness that people like, and that sort of cynical humor about being a mother, but it would also have more complicated issues and be about something more important at the same time. That's what I'm trying to do."

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