Poison Pen — Mary Kittredge

Bad Ending. Struggling each month to fill the pages of her new magazine for writers, Charlotte Kent finds herself up the proverbial creek when she discovers her biggest, and very nearly only, contributor, Wesley Bell, sitting dead in her office swivel chair. Those with a motive include a cruelly lampooned literary critic, a brooding failed writer with an ax to grind, Bell's aggressive young protege, his cream-puff wife, and they're only four of a bizarre group of people who knew Bell for the brutal, sadistic cad that he was. Charlotte discovers the hard way that she's on the top of somebody's must-kill list. An ending she'd like to skip entirely, if possible.