Game over at Guild Hall in the third in the Vermont Country Living Mystery series. In this outing, the Buckleys are invited to attend at Game Supper at the Guild Hall. Not a sports game supper or a board game supper but a game meat supper. The object is to sample all of the game recipes: venison stew, bear meatballs and the like.
The supper does not turn out as planned. An young man, Mudd Morrison, angry that his ‘gleaned’ meat (read roadkill) is not included, confronts organizer Bessent. He is sent on his way but a short while later Bessent drops dead, poisoned.
Later that night, Stella sees a light at the guild hall as someone searches Bessent’s office.
She begins to dig into the mystery, discovering that Bessent’s game supper has created quite a few enemies, from the exhausted volunteers, to Mudd Morrison, to the environmentalist who is worried about sustainability, even the local priest.
Then, in the middle of all this, Stella’s mother arrives unexpectedly with a catastrophe of her own.
And I can’t forget the talking dog. Yes, seriously. Truly funny.
The Nick and Nora Charles vibe is alive and well, the characters are offbeat but never implausible, the mystery is intriguing. I love this series and can’t wait for the fourth installment. A must read.
Nick and Sarah Buckley trade their city life on Murray Hill for a rustic farmhouse in Vermont. Barely a few hours after they arrive, they discover a body in the well – by way of blood in the tap water. Since their house is now a crime scene, they must leave. But where can they go? The town is full of leaf peepers and there is not a room to be had.
Offered a hunting camp, with no electricity or running water, they soon realize that if they ever want to return to their house, they are going to have to solve the crime.
Accordingly, they begin speaking to their neighbors and soon discover the victim was almost universally loathed. And the locals; well, quirky does not begin to describe them. But Sarah and Nick persevere.
This cozy has a real Nick and Nora Charles or Hart to Hart vibe. It is laugh out loud funny. A++. Highly recommended.
In The Long Shadow of Murder, I explore the long lasting effects of past actions.
One of the side threads concerns the Battle of Minisink.
Minisink is an area in Orange/Sullivan County. It was the only decisive battle fought in the upper Delaware Valley. Most of the British soldiers were concentrated in and around New York City.
On July 22, 1779, Joseph Brant, an Iroquois and a supporter of the British, led a party of warriors and Loyalists disguised as warriors, upon Minisink. Only a few settlers were killed because they fled to the fort, but the settlement was destroyed. Riders from Minisink reported the raid in Goshen, New York (where I worked at the Library for many years – but not during this time, of course). A militia under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Tusten set out. They were joined by a detachment of men from Sussex, New Jersey and, a little bit later, by militia from Warwick under the command of Colonel John Hathorn. Although Tusten did not want to follow the Iroquois, the militia dismissed the fighting ability of the Iroquois. With 120 men, the militia marched out to engage.
Hathorn planned to ambush Brant but before it was set, Brant got wind of the approaching force. (Accounts vary a little here.) Brant took the high ground. After several hours, ammunition ran low and the fighting degenerated to hand to hand combat. At least 46 militia men were killed, including Tusten. Hathorn was seriously wounded but survived. Brant lost only 7 men.
Brant gave no quarter to the captured and wounded men. All were killed. The widows could not collect the remains for 43 years, because of the battle site’s remote location. Eventually, the remains were collected and brought to Goshen, where they are buried beneath a stone obelisk.
In the aftermath, another American force went after Brant. Although they did not catch him, they swept through forty Iroquois villages, killing everyone – men, women, and children – in their path.
Although there was no term for PTSD then, I suspect the soldiers on both sides carried scars from the events of those days, especially the destruction of the Iroquois villages. These were non-combatants, unarmed, and mainly women and children. That would be pretty hard to justify.
First, I want to give a shout out to the Poughkeepsie Barnes and Noble for hosting the mystery panel yesterday. The four of us: Jode Millman, Nancy Bilyeau, Tina deBellegarde and myself engaged in a lively discussion about writing, and of course about our books. Thanks again to Barnes and Noble.
This week I read The Sacred Bridge by Anne Hillerman.
Jim Chee is struggling to decide his path forward. He loves his job but worries he has given up his dream to become a haitaii, a medicine man/shaman. He takes a hiking trip in the back country to clear his head, aiming for a sandstone bridge that is sacred to the Navahoes. While there, he discovers a body floating in a man-made lake. Because he discovered the body, he is asked to remain an extra week and investigate.
At the same time. Bernie (Manuelito) has her own problems. She is worried about her mother’s increasing forgetfulness. And, while she is traveling home, she sees the murder of a man on the highway. Trying to discover the man’s identity, and the reason behind his murder. draws her into a case of her own and a very dangerous undercover operation at a hemp farm.
Anne Hillerman describes the setting as carefully as her father did and the mysteries are very good. She is a worthy successor to this series involving Leaphorn, (the Legendary Lieutenant), Jim Chee, and Bernie Manuelito.
In two weeks, the newest of the Will Rees/Shaker series will be released. In The Long Shadow of Murder, a body is discovered in the woods near the Shaker community of Zion. Suspicion immediately falls on the Shakers, although Rees is skeptical. He feels there are plenty of other suspects, including the victim’s wife and other traveling companions. Indeed, the murder has its roots in the Revolutionary War.
The Shakers were, if not the most successful commune, was certainly one of them. An offshoot of the Quakers, the name Shakers comes from ‘the Shaking Quakers.” The group’s proper name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing; with a name like that it is understandable they had a shorter and more easily remembered nickname.
The wellspring of the Shakers was a woman, Mother Ann Lee. She sailed to the colonies in the middle 1700s and set up a damsel community just outside of Albany, New York. (The runways for the airport are now located over the old fields.) Like the Quakers, they believed in simplicity and were abolitionists. Mother Ann Lee a former Quaker, was revered. Her position as the prophet/leader resulted in two important doctrines: men and women were equal – highly unusual in this day and age, and they were celibate. Despite that, for many years, they thrived.
How did they succeed for so long then? And they were. They took in converts. Here the unmarried woman could find a home, The disabled could find a home. The landless men, who frequently stopped at the Shaker villages for the winter, thus earning the title of Winter Shaker, had three meals a day and a roof over the heads. Although many left again come spring, some probably remained.
And they adopted orphans. Since this was a world with no safety net, and lots of death, there were a lot of orphans. Besides training these children in the skills they would need in an agrarian world – the girls learned cooking, sewing and other homemaking skills, and the boys farming – they were taught how to read and write. Since males and females were rigidly separated, the boys went in winter, the girls in summer. The Shakers thrived until the world changed. After 1900, the United States went from agrarian to industrial. Girls now could work in factories.
In 1966, the United States passed a law stating that the Shakers could no longer adopt orphans. That really impacted this group.
Yes, they still accept converts. The numbers have shrunk to 2, but one is a younger man who converted. These two live at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. This was the smallest and poorest of all the Shaker communities. My village of Zion is based on Sabbathday Lake.
Why did I choose to set murders within or near this group? Well, although most were peaceful good people, there are always some bad apples. Certainly the acceptance of anyone, and the toleration of the Winter Shakers, opened up the communities to some of these bad’uns.
I pre-ordered the new Finlay Donovan book: Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave.
Like her previous books, this is a mix of mystery, humor and romance. Finlay’s neighbor, the nosy Mrs. Haggerty who documents everything going on in the neighborhood. Then a body is discovered in Mrs. Haggerty’s back yard. Although she is cleared, her house remains a crime scene. Mrs. Haggerty’s nephew drops her off at Finlay’s, leaving her to sleep in the spare room while her elderly neighbor takes the master bedroom. Finlay and her best friend Vero want to stay out of this investigation – but when Finlay’s ex Stephen becomes a prime suspect, they have no choice.
And Mrs. Haggerty has secrets of her own. Finlay watches her leave the house late at night to hand deliver notes. Wha-a-a-t?
Lots of fun.
This is another book I picked up at the Suffolk Festival. I’ve read several of the other series by Christine Trent: the Lady of Ashes series and the Florence Nightingale mysteries and enjoyed them. St. Clement’s Bluff is a change of pace.
Raleigh is devastated by her husband Grant’s death. When she finally begins to recover, and reads Grant’s will, she is shocked to discover he has left her a house on St. Clement’s Bluff. None of his family seem to know anything about it.
When Raleigh visits it, she finds an old house with its history as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The house is totally empty, except for one room that is filled with beautifully carved furniture. Raleigh begins to investigate.
She gradually meets nearby neighbors, including a fisherman, Kip Hewitt who saves her from a half-hearted suicide attempt.
Well-written, and with a clever mystery, but the real draw are the characters.
I read several books while I was on vacation (somewhere warm!), I read several books. But I want to focus on one: Three inch teeth by C.J. Box.
This is one of the newest (24 of 25) by Box and continues his Joe Pickett series.
This reads less like a mystery than an adventure story since we know from the beginning what is actually happening. The novel begins with a bang when the young man courting Sheridan, Pickett’s daughter, is attacked and killed by a grizzly bear. The situation rapidly becomes far more complicated when there are multiple murders all over Wyoming.
Simultaneously, Dallas Cates, a violent prisoner who swore vengeance on Joe, his friend Nate, and others is released from prison. He hooks up with Soledad, another enemy of Nate and Joe, and the two plan to murder the men they see as their enemies.
Action and violence filled. My own criticism is that MaryBeth plays a very small role in this one.
This past week I read two books that could not be more different, both suggested to me by Amazon.
While I read Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan, I kept thinking that it had a very old fashioned feel. The action takes place at a Christmas Party, at a fancy house, in the snow. The detective, Mordecai Tremaine, is a bland fellow with piece-nez.
Christmas morning, the guests are shocked to find the body of a fellow guest wearing a Santa suit. He is the guardian of a young girl. (This is where the old-fashioned nature appears; the description of the girl, and the other women in fact, is very dated.) As usual, as Tremaine investigates, he discovers everyone has secrets, from Benedict Grame’s sister (planning to elope) to the seemingly dull married couple, to Benedict himself.
Dated in some respects but the mystery holds up. Recommended.
The second book I read was Singapore Sapphire.
Harriet Gordon has moved to Singapore to live with her brother after a stint in Holloway prison for her activities as a suffragette. Her brother is a minister and the headmaster of a boys’ school. Desperate for some income, she advertises her services as a stenographer and typist. When she goes to the home of her first client, Sir Oswald Newbold, to retrieve her typewriter, she finds his body. This introduces her to Robert Curran, the Detective Inspector of the Police force. Needless to say, Harriet involves herself in the investigation. She develops a friendship with Curran, something she wishes would be more. But he is already involved with a beautiful Chinese woman.
This mystery has it all: interesting characters, an exotic and well-drawn locale, and a captivating mystery.
I’ve been a fan of Elaine Viets since she wrote the Dead End jobs mysteries. (Very funny if you haven’t yet read any.) A few years ago, she turned to a new series. Angela Richman is a Death Scene investigator which is fascinating to read about in itself. A Star is Dead is the third in the series.
Angela becomes involved in the death of a famous, but now older movie star, Jessica Gray. She has transitioned to a stand up comic. As the last bit, she has three homeless women come on the stage and strip, humiliating them, while delighting most of her audience.
Jessica is suffering a severe respiratory disease and during a coughing fit, seizes and dies. Murder of course. And Angela’s good friend Mario, hair stylist extraordinaire, is arrested for the crime. Angela is determined to prove his innocence. She is convinced that someone else, probably one of the three members of Jessica’s coterie, committed the crime.
At the same time, one of the homeless women is murdered and Angela looks into a few other crimes.
I enjoyed the mystery and did not guess who Jessica’s murderer was. My only complaint is that Angela and the police are so obtuse they don’t pick up several of the clues, clues I thought were obvious. Still, an enjoyable mystery. Recommended.
Now that the holidays are over, it is time to get back into the routine.
Over my week off, I read three books by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes. Although classed as science fiction, they are also murder mysteries.
The first in the series is Dream Park.
Dream Park is a gamers’ paradise, a giant park with live games involving holograms, as well as actors, and puzzles. A group of gamers is just beginning the South Seas Treasure game when in the surrounding tunnels a security officer is found dead, murdered. A valuable chemical scent is missing. Alex Griffin, the head of Dream Park Security, enters the game to find the murderer. He becomes enmeshed in the group and is soon involved in the game.
The New Guinea setting, the zombies, and the myths surrounding them are absolutely captivating. I would so want to participate in such a game.
The Barsoom Project is the second in the series.
This entry begins with a bang. This game is set in an Inuit village and the gamers are menaced by a monster from the sea. Eviane shoots at the members of the Cabal, the group controlling the monster. To her surprise, instead of a flash of red signifying a kill shot, the man’s head explodes.
Eviane has been given a rifle with live ammunition and kills two men very very dead. Now, after a stint in a mental hospital, she is back in dream park to lay her demons to rest. She is participating in a Fat Ripper special. (the participants are trying so hard to stay alive that they barely eat.) Eviane hopes she will remember the events surrounding the deaths but someone is determined to prevent that. It is up to the Griffin to solve the mystery.
The third in the series is the California Voodoo Game.
The new game will be held in a damaged building left over from the big California quake. Before the game begins, Alex Griffin’s new love is discovered murdered. Not long after, it is discovered that someone is trying to throw the game. Why? What is their end goal?
Furious and grieving, Griffin enters the game as a guide, a NPC (a non-playing character) to find the truth as the gamers battle monsters and zombies rising from their graves.
This entry was a bit darker than the first two but the adventure was just as riveting.
