PUSHING MURDER

Henry Gamadge's widow Clara (Murder Machree, 1992, etc.) is earmarked for death, but why? Someone tries to poison her at the opening of her friend Sal's mystery bookshop, Pushing Murder, and again at the hospital where she's recuperating. Then Janet Folsom, who, like Clara, attended Sal's wedding to Dwight the week before, calls to say she's to blame—the reason is in a letter she's mailed to Clara. Before it can be reclaimed, Janet is killed in the hospital chapel, and Clara and her friends struggle to outwit a wedding/opening-day participant, whose past includes a name change, an unacknowledged wife or two—and a tendency to fleece wealthy women of their assets. One more will die, and Clara will be stalked through the hospital by the homicidal cad, before all is set to rights. Awfully slight, but one could hardly ask for more genial company than Clara et al.