Misery may love Maggody, Ark., but police chief Arly Hanks’s mom, Ruby Bee, is itching to leave the no-horse town (pop. 755) together with her crony Estelle Oppers for a pilgrimage to Graceland, complete with stops at Elvis’s birthplace in Tupelo, the Elvis museum and chapel, several Elvis souvenir shops, and a climactic dinner with entertainment provided by a bevy of Elvis impersonators. The only trouble is that the package tour they’ve booked through a fly-by-night local lands them in a heartbreak hotel in Memphis before whisking them off—along with their tour companions: a pair of female entertainers, an eloping couple, and a waspish professor of popular culture—to The Luck of the Draw Casino and Hotel in Tunica, Miss., instead of Tupelo, spelling disaster for the couple’s plans to get hitched in the Graceland chapel and boding even worse for Ruby Bee (who’ll end up in the hospital with an undiagnosed malady) and for one of the entertainers (who skips the hospital and goes straight to the morgue). So Arly has to tear herself away from the current round of chicken-fried madness in Maggody—the satanist who’s desecrating the Mount Zion church by leaving barrettes behind, the continuing follies of the brain-dead Buchanon family (The Maggody Militia, 1997, etc.)—to show the Tunica police just how it’s done. The result is as marvelously giddy as anything in Hess’s first ten chronicles of Maggody, with a core of logic as surprising as a Cracker Jack prize. As even the Tunica cops admit, “This is better than a miniseries.”
Pub Date: Jan. 26, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-84562-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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