NO WAY TO KILL A LADY

The death of her great-aunt sends Philadelphia socialite Nora Blackbird (Murder Melts in Your Mouth, 2008, etc.) into a nicely accessorized tizzy.

It’s not easy running Blackbird Farm, her family’s sprawling Main Line estate, on her salary as a society-page reporter. Not even with the help of her pregnant sister, Emma, who supplements their income giving riding lessons, or the encouragement of her ditzy sister, Libby, whose attempts to raise five children and post pictures of her latest pedicure to her website, PitterPat, leave her no time to actually earn money. So Nora is overjoyed to learn that her great-aunt, “Madcap” Madeleine Blackbird, left her estate to the three sisters and their cousin, Sutherland. Unfortunately, her trip back to Quintain reveals the mansion stripped of all the glittering treasures Nora remembers from her childhood visits. But worse than what’s gone is what’s been added: a skeletonized corpse trapped in the elevator. While Sutherland tries in vain to seduce Nora into a partnership that will consolidate his hold over their joint inheritance, Nora slips a Dior spring jacket over her vintage lace suit and hits the charity fundraiser circuit, hoping that someone from Maddie’s flamboyant past can ID the deceased. But her boyfriend, repentant mobster Michael “Mick” Abruzzo, is not the kind who can let a lace suit pass unnoticed, particularly when it encases his shapely paramour. Will Mick’s release from prison to house arrest at Blackbird Farm distract Nora from her mission, or will his connections help her solve the puzzle from the past?

Slightly gamer than in her earlier exploits, Nora steps closer to the plate in Martin’s latest outing.