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Tag Archives: mystery
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!
Mary Roberts Rinehart’s “The Circular Staircase”
Our selection for March 2007 was the Mary Roberts Rinehart classic, The Circular Staircase.
A middle-aged spinster rents a country house for the summer and soon finds herself plunged into a nasty scenario of bank defaults, stolen securities and murder. An entertaining blend of intrigue, villainy and heart-pounding suspense for crime fiction buffs and lovers of great mystery classics.
This title was discussed at the Just Desserts meeting on March 29, 2007. We encourage you to share your own thoughts and opinions about this book in a reply comment to this blog post, below!
David Wiltse’s Heartland
For February 2007, we returned stateside, with a murder mystery set right here at home!
Nebraska author David Wiltse’s mystery, Heartland, is set in Falls City, NE. Here’s the book blurb: Falls City, Nebraska. Just a scratch on the Great Plains. To Billy Tree, it’s home-the last refuge for the ex-Secret Service agent scarred in body and soul by an unforgettable tragedy. But he’s trading one for another. For the quiet burg of his youth has changed over the years. Darkness has taken hold. And now, the killing secrets and terrible lies buried beneath the tranquil surface of Falls City are ready to erupt…. Where it begins is with a shocking sniper attack at the local high school. No motive. No clues. Just two innocent teachers left dead, and a third injured. A woman with secrets of her own, she shares a place in Billy’s heart, his past, and his fears, when a second murder paralyzes the town. Urged by the sheriff to help in the investigation, Billy can’t refuse. Even if it means seeing old friends in a terrifying new light, and exposing himself to the insidious rage of a mysterious killer…. It all ends in the shattering silence of an isolated silo. Here blood will tell. The secrets of Falls City will unfold. And the truth could cost Billy more than he’d ever imagined….
This title was discussed at the Just Desserts meeting on February 22, 2007. We encourage you to share your own thoughts and opinions about this book in a reply comment to this blog post, below!
The Hamish Macbeth novels of M.C. Beaton
For our first meeting of 2007, we eased back into things with another British series detective. In this case, it’s M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth, sleuth in twenty-two novels so far. Rather than select a specific title in this series, we encouraged all the Just Desserts participants to select any one or more of the Hamish Macbeth books to read. We then held a general discussion of the series as a whole when we met on the last Thursday of January, 2007.
The 22 volumes of M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series are available in a variety of formats, including: Hardback, Paperback, downloadable audio files, Book-on-CD and even a few on Large Type editions. In addition, the first two seasons of the 3-season British television series based on the books [1995-1997] were also available on DVD in the library’s collections: Series One | Series Two
The Hamish Macbeth series was discussed at the Just Desserts meeting on January 25, 2007. We encourage you to share your own thoughts and opinions about these book in a reply comment to this blog post, below!
The Works of Ed McBain
During the Nov/Dec 2006 hiatus between meetings of the Just Desserts group, we encouraged regular attendees to participate in our online book discussion forum. At that time we had a special Just Desserts forum set up, and we challenged everyone to read any book by Ed McBain (or any of those written under his given name of Evan Hunter), then visit the Book Lovers Discussion Forums, to post their comments.
To introduce you to the works of Ed McBain, we encourage you to visit our Remembering…Ed McBain page, which we created following the author’s death in 2005.
This topic was discussed on the now-defunct Just Desserts discussion forum during the November/December 2006 hiatus of Just Desserts. We encourage you to share your own thoughts and opinions about any of Ed McBain’s books in a reply comment to this blog post, below!