The term "chick lit" conjures up images of an easy weekend read spent on the couch with a box of chocolates. Readers aren't expecting literary heft when they pick up these books.

		"GOODNIGHT NOBODY" Jennifer Weiner Atria Books ($26)

By But then again, they know what they are getting -- witty female protagonists at emotional crossroads, mysterious men providing sexual tension, identifiable characters in involved relationships and slightly improbable plots neatly wrapped up by Page 350. You can't expect too much nutritional value from brain candy.

In many ways, Jennifer Weiner's new novel falls squarely into the genre. Clever and engaging female protagonist? Check.

Dark and handsome love interest from the past? Check.

Improbable chain of events involving two-dimensional characters? Check.

But "Goodnight Nobody" pleasantly strays from the chick-lit path, most notably by introducing a murder mystery in the first chapter, a la "Desperate Housewives." And just as the reader starts to believe she's sunk her teeth into another bonbon of a novel, Weiner throws in some roughage, allowing the reader to identify with the internal conflicts and identity questions with which the protagonist grapples.

This is the fourth novel for Weiner, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. Her name probably sounds familiar because her second novel, "In Her Shoes," was recently turned into a Hollywood film.

Her latest is set in affluent Upchurch, Conn., home of ex-New Yorker Kate Klein, a former celebrity gossip-rag editor and current stay-at-home mother of three .

Upchurch is the land of million-dollar homes where the other homebound mothers get buff at Mommy-and-Me Pilates classes, go to the playground in designer jeans and high-heeled boots and feed their children flaxseed muffins.

Full-figured Kate, with her unmanageable frizzy hair, her tried-and-true mommy uniform of stained cargo pants and a T-shirt and her precocious daughter and rough-and-tumble twin boys, is having a difficult time fitting in.

She and her oft-absent, workaholic husband, Ben, moved there for the safer environment, an illusion that is shattered when Kate stumbles over the dead body of their well-manicured neighbor, Kitty Cavanaugh.

She's another impossible ideal wife and mother who turns up on the pickled maple floor of her kitchen with a butcher knife in her back. When Kate learns Kitty was a ghostwriter for a conservative pundit named Laura Lynn Baird -- a character undoubtedly inspired by talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger -- conspiracy theories abound.

Spurred by boredom as much as curiosity, Kate starts to investigate Kitty's murder. During her sleuthing, she navigates a fantasy land of over-the-top supermoms, Kitty's philandering husband and mysterious men from Kitty's past.

But it's not like Weiner is transcending the genre. Her book's still a light, amusing read peppered with enough pop-culture and parenting references to keep most 30-something moms chuckling.

Ultimately, it's flat characters such as the militant anti-feminist Baird that hold back the novel. That's frustrating because Weiner proves she can create a rich, multi-dimensional persona.

The pleasant surprise is that, in the middle of a featherweight murder mystery, the reader empathizes with Kate as she asks herself what many people, especially stay-at-home mothers, have asked:

Have I made the right choices?