RANSOM FOR A HOLIDAY
by Fred Hunter
Two years after the Yuletide murder of her brother Nathan closed Hawthorne House, her bed-and-breakfast outside upstate LeFavre, Michigan, Sara Bartlett is ready to reopen. Her first pair of guests—Chicago homicide detective Jeremy Ransom and his grandmotherly friend Emily Charters, recuperating from open-heart surgery (Ransom for Our Sins, 1996, etc.)—couldn't be more suitable. Egged on by seasonal benignancy and simple nosiness, Ransom and Emily swiftly narrow the suspects down to Hawthorne House baker/cleaner Millie Havers, rolling-stone handyman Hansen Crane, cocky odd-jobber Johnnie Larkin, Nathan's old girlfriend Amy Shelton, and Sara's old flame Sheriff Jeff Fields—then watch as a second murder narrows the field even further. As quietly warming as a Christmas breakfast.