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|---|---|---|
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Hess, J. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Dallas Public Library | LARGE PRINT - HESS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Arkansas bookseller Claire Malloy finds herself in charge of Farberville's first-ever mystery convention with five major mystery writers making the trek to the local college for "Murder Comes to Campus". In the midst of chaos, Claire has to deal with five quirky and difficult writers (including one who arrives with Wimple, her crime-solving cat in tow). To make matters worse, the feared, distrusted, and disliked editor of Pardigm House, Roxanne Small, has arrived unannounced. With Claire's own love-life woes added in, things have never been worse.
Until things get worse. One of the conference attendees dies in a car accident, Wimple disappears from Claire's home, and Roxanne Small is nowhere to be found -- making it evident that in Farberville the murder mystery is more than a literary genre.
Author Notes
Joan Hess was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1949. She received a bachelor's degree in art from the University of Arkansas in 1971 and a master's degree in education from Long Island University in 1974. For several years, she taught art in a private preschool.
Her first book, Strangled Prose, was published in 1986. She was the author of the Claire Malloy Mystery series and the Arly Hanks Mystery series. A Diet to Die For won the American Mystery Award for best traditional novel of 1989. A short story, Too Much to Bare, received the Agatha Award in 1990 and the McCavity Award in 1991. She also wrote the Theo Bloomer series under the pseudonym Joan Hadley. She finished the final Amelia Peabody novel, The Painted Queen, using the notes of Elizabeth Peters and their conversations to finish the book. It was published in 2017. She died on November 23, 2017 at the age of 68.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-A light, humorous, uncomplicated mystery. Claire Malloy, bookseller and mother of a daughter who speaks in Capital Letters, is asked to facilitate the first-ever mystery convention on the campus of Farber College after the dynamic organizer of the event is hospitalized. The temperamental authors arrive, one with a forbidden cat in tow, to be housed in the Azalea Inn. The strict innkeeper adds even more to the bedlam. One conference attendee dies in a mysterious accident while a much-disliked editor is found dead at the bottom of a cistern. The policeman investigating the deaths is none other than Claire's ex-boyfriend, yet another frustration for her. Hess's snappy dialogue and descriptions of peevish characters move the mystery along. The ending is not entirely satisfying but the story is entertaining enough without a perfect finish. YAs will immediately relate to the daughter and her sleuthing mother and look forward to future Claire Malloy mysteries.-Katherine Fitch, Rachel Carson Middle School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bookseller Claire Malloy returns for her lucky 13th outing in another slyly satirical whodunit from Hess (A Holly Jolly Murder; the Maggody series). As the person in charge of the first mystery convention to be held at Farber College in Farberville, Ark., Claire faces numerous challenges keeping the participating authors happy. Laureen Parks, doyenne of the romantic suspense novel, is cranky because she can't smoke at the Azalea Inn, where everyone is domiciled. Sherry Lynne Blackstone, queen of the kitty cozy, has her fur ruffled because the inn doesn't allow pets. Dilys Knoxweed, writer of English mysteries, is stung by the insults from Walter Dahl, who pens poorly selling literary mysteries about heroes overwhelmed by their neuroses. Rounding out the list is Allegra Cruzetti, media darling and author of a runaway bestseller. As if the situation weren't fraught with enough potential disaster, obnoxious editor Roxanne Small, who has a personal connection to each of the writers, shows up to surprise them. When a conference attendee dies a seemingly accidental death and Roxanne ends up dead in a cistern, Claire once again turns sleuth to save the day. Juggling the problems of her relationship with Farberville detective Peter Rosen while sniffing out the truth proves no easy matter, but the witty, pithy Claire is equal to the task. Offering a teasingly intricate puzzle along with some zinging satire of current publishing trends, Hess has produced another first-rate mystery. Regional author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Perennially put-upon bookseller Claire Malloy (A Holly, Jolly Murder, 1999, etc.) is marching to an assertive new beat these days. She may have been impoverished by the untimely demise of her philandering husband Carlton, frustrated beyond belief at the adolescent angst of her daughter Caron, betrayed by her boyfriend Peter, and left in the lurch by convention chair Sally Fromberger, who's had the bad grace to be hospitalized with deep venal thrombosis on the eve of Farberville College's "Murder Comes to Campus" conference. But Claire refuses to play nursemaid to the four quarrelsome authors--Laureen Parks (gothic novels), Sherry Lynne Blackstone (cat detectives), Walter Dahl, (psychological thrillers), and Dilys Knoxwood (cozies)--who arrive for the festivities along with sweet-as-pie bestseller Alexandra Cruzetti and her editor, Roxanne Small. Instead, she presses Caron and her best friend Inez into taxi duty; browbeats Lily Twiller, proprietor of the environmentally correct Azalea Inn into allowing Laureen to smoke in her room; wrangles Sherry Lynne's feline traveling companion Wimple onto her sun-porch; and tirelessly exhorts the authors to quit bickering and get on with the show. She even succeeds in getting the pregnant, truculent English department secretary to let her leave several cartons of to-be-autographed books in the lecture hall. Getting them out, however, turns into a problem when Arnie Riggles, weekend custodian, turns up cold-cocked in the Azalea Inn's cistern, along with a very dead Roxanne Small, sending Claire into an immediate heads-on with ex-beau Peter, Farberville's chief of police. First-rate Hess: crackling dialogue, winning characters, and an ingenious puzzle. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Hess' Claire Malloy series has never enjoyed the following of her Maggody novels--perhaps because its comedy is less crazed--but this latest installment offers an enjoyable take on a familiar theme: murder at a mystery writers' convention. When the organizer of "Murder Comes to Campus" is hospitalized, bookseller Malloy is roped into leading the conference, which features five mystery authors, none of whom is pleased to be cooped up at tiny Farber College in Farberville, Arkansas. The egomaniacal authors are soon driving Claire even more crazy than her teenage daughter. Then Roxanne Small, an editor of many and enemy of most, turns up dead, leaving all five authors as prime suspects. Whether Hess meant any of these characters to resemble real writers is unknown, but a few of them bear striking resemblances to some familiar figures in the genre. Claire proceeds to solve the crime, with the help, of course, of the mystery writers themselves. Good fun for those who are, or would like to be, insiders in the crime-fiction world. --Jenny McLarin
Library Journal Review
Arkansas bookseller/sleuth Claire Malloy organizes a mystery convention at Farber College that goes awry. Five major writers and attendant quirks create problems, as does the appearance/disappearance of a hated mystery editor and the suspicious death of an attendee. An excellent choice. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.