Tag Archives: Just Dessert

Joan Hess’ “The Goodbye Body”

We return to a contemporary author in April, with the latest in Joan Hess’ popular “Claire Malloy” series, The Goodbye Body. Claire Malloy runs a bookstore in the normally quiet college town of Farberville, Arkansas – an enterprise that provides a verging-on-meager living for her and her deeply sarcastic teenage daughter, Caron. When emergency work forces Claire and Caron to abandon their apartment for a few weeks, they are in no financial position to put themselves up in style, and so Claire is thrilled to accept a customer’s offer to let them stay at her well-stocked, well-equipped, palatial home while she is traveling. Of course, nothing is ever that easy. No sooner do Claire and Caron ensconce themselves than disquieting events start to occur: Dubious people show up looking for the “traveling” owner of the house; the owner herself turns out not to be who she claimed and is now seemingly on the run; and a dead body keeps turning up – and subsequently disappearing – around the grounds of the house. Claire is determined, for once, to stay out of the mysterious doings, but her hand is finally forced when the disappearing body turns out to be only the first corpse to turn up.

This title was discussed at the Just Desserts meeting on April 26, 2007. We encourage you to share your own thoughts and opinions about this book in a reply comment to this blog post, below!