What starts off as Easter eggs ends up as one big, shapeless omelet in Lucy’s feckless 21st.
A holiday tradition turns lethal in small-town Maine.
The residents of Tinker’s Cove have always dressed their toddlers in their Sunday best for the annual Easter egg hunt at Vivian Van Vorst’s beautiful mansion. But this year, Pine Point is looking a bit seedy. The lawn is unkempt, no one is directing traffic, and VV is nowhere to be seen. Worst of all, her grandson, Van Vorst Duff, dressed in a bunny suit, drops dead at the gates of the estate before he can hide a single egg. Lucy Stone (Chocolate Covered Murder, 2011, etc.), ace reporter for the Tinker’s Cove Pennysaver, takes time off from covering the town council meeting to help her colleague Phyllis’ niece Elfrida cater Van’s funeral—giving her plenty of opportunity to snoop. She discovers that VV is being confined to her room and fed nothing but canned nutritional supplement while her granddaughter Vicky Allen and Vicky’s husband, Henry, aided by unscrupulous lawyer George Weatherby, sell off her priceless art treasures. When the Allens give VV’s faithful butler Willis the sack, they have a fight on their hands. Thanks to local attorney Bob Goodman, the trio is brought to trial on charges of elder abuse. Reporters from all over the country choke the streets of Gilead, the county seat. Famous defense attorney Howard Zuzick, representing the Allens, looks as if he might have some tricks up his sleeve. But surprise! Meier drops that plot and instead packs Lucy off on a mission to hunt down VV’s long-lost daughter for former librarian Miss Julia Tilley.
What starts off as Easter eggs ends up as one big, shapeless omelet in Lucy’s feckless 21st.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-2935-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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