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Searching... Silver Falls Library | MYS MCCRUMB | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stayton Public Library | M MCCRUMB Sharyn | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Whenever Sharyn McCrumb suits up her amateur detective, Elizabeth MacPherson, it's pretty certain that a trip is in the offing and that something deadly funny will happen on the road." --The New York Times Book Review Now, the author of She Walks These Hills brings her storytelling gifts to a novel about crimes committed a century apart. For forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson, solving mysteries hardly seems the fun it used to be--even if she is the official private investigator for her brother Bill's fledgling Virginia law firm. Then Bill and his feminist firebrand partner, A. P. Hill, take on two complex cases that will require Elizabeth's special participation. Eleanor Royden, a perfect lawyer's wife for twenty years, has shot her ex-husband and his beautiful late-model wife in cold blood. And Donna Jean Morgan finds herself married to a Bible-thumping bigamist who has the nerve to die in circumstances that implicate his wife. A. P. does her damnedest for Eleanor, an abused wife in denial, and Bill gallantly defends Donna Jean. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's forensic expertise, including her special knowledge of poisons, gives her the most challenging case of her career. As questions of wife abuse and abandonment emerge in the court of public opinion, Elizabeth becomes a war correspondent in the battle of the sexes--a battle as old as the hills and unlikely to reach a truce any time soon....
Author Notes
Sharyn McCrumb was born in Wilmington, North Carolina on February 26, 1948. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received an M.A. in English from Virginia Tech. Her novels include the Elizabeth MacPherson series and the Ballad series. St. Dale won a 2006 Library of Virginia Award and the Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year Award. Ghost Riders won the Wilma Dykeman Award for Literature and the Audie Award for Best Recorded Book. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Sherwood Anderson Short Story Award, the Perry F. Kendig Award for Achievement in Literary Arts, the Chaffin Award for Southern Literature, and the Plattner Award for Short Story. In 2014, she received the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Southern Literature by North Carolina's Chowan University.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Three grievously wronged women take murderous revenge in this sharp-edged, witty tale, the eighth appearance of forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson. Her skills at research and detection come into play when she is hired as an investigator by her brother Bill's Virginia law firm. Bill has been asked to defend a woman accused of poisoning her philandering husband, a piously hypocritical preacher. Another law partner, the resolute Amy Powell Hill, ponders how best to defend a Richmond socialite who gleefully admits to shooting both her ex-husband and his new wife. Intertwined with these contemporary cases is a 19th-century mystery: How did a genteel Southern lady manage to poison her wealthy Yankee husband? Buoyed by intriguing characters, a wrysometimes macabrewit, and lush Virginia atmosphere, McCrumb's (MacPherson's Lament; The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter) mystery spins merrily along on its own momentum, concluding that justice will triumph... but in surprising ways. Mystery Guild selection. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Looks like open season on cheating husbands in Danville, Virginia. Brightly remorseless Eleanor Royden has just emptied a revolver into the man who ditched her for a bimbo named Staci-- don't worry, she saved a bullet for Staci, too--and Donna Jean Morgan's husband, the Rev. Chevry Morgan, has died of arsenic poisoning shortly after announcing his polygamous marriage to his own bimbo. When Donna Jean tells her lawyer, Bill MacPherson, that she's a descendant of Lethal Lucy Todhunter--the local celebrity whose husband also died of arsenic poisoning soon after returning from the Civil War--Bill wants his sister Elizabeth (MacPherson's Lament, 1992, etc.) to reopen the Todhunter case and figure out just how Lucy did it. But can Elizabeth rouse herself from her concerns with her divorced mother's current lesbian fling and her own cheerful denial of marital loss--she's still writing letters to the husband who'll never return--and can Bill get justice for Miri Malone, the animal-rights activist who wants to marry a dolphin? Elizabeth's eighth outing has it all--a gaggle of tidy mysteries, nonstop laughs, bumper-sticker wisdom about the male animal, and some other, sadder kinds of wisdom, too. Quite a banquet--if you don't mind all that arsenic. (Literary Guild, Doubleday & Mystery Guild selections)
Booklist Review
In her new book, Edgar winner McCrumb offers up a variety of miniplots revolving around fed-up wives and recalcitrant husbands and successfully weaves the disparate stories into a singularly charming tale. Elizabeth MacPherson, heroine of earlier McCrumb novels, is home in Virginia mourning the loss of her beloved husband and working as a part-time investigator for her lawyer brother Bill. Bill's caseload is daunting: besides trying to convince a woman she can't marry a dolphin, he's trying to figure out how to beat a murder rap for dowdy Donna Jean Morgan, who is accused of poisoning her bigamist husband. Unluckily, she also happens to be the great-granddaughter of Lucy Todhunter, a known husband-poisoner in Civil War times. Meanwhile, Bill's law partner, A. P. Hill, is losing sleep over client Eleanor Royden, who's blithely shot her former husband and his young bimbo-bride and isn't a bit repentant. There's more in the way of hijinks, heroics, and hilarity, but McCrumb juggles the multiple plots with aplomb and offers up a delightfully entertaining, uniquely plotted story. (Reviewed Apr. 1, 1995)0345382293Jasmine Nights
Library Journal Review
Elizabeth MacPherson, Southern sleuth and forensic anthropologist, investigates a pair of murders for her brother's Virginia law firm. From the author of Missing Susan (Ballantine, 1991). (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.