[A Daffodils Mystery 04] • Murder in the Stacks
- Authors
- Clay, Mary
- Publisher
- IF Mystery
- Tags
- florida , cozy , cosy , daffodils , mystery , new smyrna beach
- ISBN
- 9780971042940
- Date
- 2010-02-15T00:01:07+00:00
- Size
- 0.26 MB
- Lang
- en
New Smyrna Beach Florida is about to be hit with an unnatural disaster. The DAFFODILS are back!
Penny Sue, Ruthie and Leigh—the DAFFODILS* (Divorced And Finally Free Of Deceitful, Insensitive, Licentious Scum®)—are Southern belles with attitudes and a knack for getting into trouble. Whenever these middle-aged sorority sisters get together chaos is sure to descend on the quaint seaside town of New Smyrna Beach. And it’s no different for the Founders' Day celebration where the featured event is a debate over which Florida city was discovered first—New Smyrna or St. Augustine.
The New Smyrna advocate is Penny Sue’s cousin Kevin, a renowned historian and the opponent is his former lover, Abby, an award-winning Central Florida expert. With real estate/tourism money at stake and bets flying, you have the frenzy of a horse race and the ingredients for murder. How could a debate turn into a brawl? How does one of the scholars end up dead in the library stacks? Make no mistake, these fine Southern ladies are not the cause of all the trouble, bedlam just seems to follow them. But this debate is no game and the DAFFODILS must find the murderer before someone else is pushing up daisies.
ReviewDAFFODILS turns to TULIPS (*Totally, Utterly Living In Perpetual Satire)
When this certain group of Southern women gets together, there always seems to be a murder--and as unfunny as murder sounds, author Mary Clay will have you rolling in the floor laughing--between trips to your liquor cabinet--as her mostly zany but likable characters go about living, drinking and solving the "crime," in which they all are directly or indirectly involved. In her most recent novel, "Murder in the Stacks," Clay spins her tale in New Smyrna Beach. Florida, where a controversy continues with history and archaeology experts over the timing of colonial establishments in St. Augustine and New Smyrna in the 1700s. A much anticipated debate on the subject at the New Smyrna library one night turns into an argument, then a melee. The meeting AND the library are evacuated and shut down. Word soon gets out that two people are found dead in the library. That's when Clay's characters--primary are friends and former college chums Penny Sue, Ruthie and Leigh, who are now of a "certain age"--get to work: first, to determine the causes of death; then to unravel a complex set of seemingly unrelated facts that involve everything from past romances to home security systems, the New Jersey mafia, a women's investment club, book returns at the library and good old-fashioned detective work. "Murder in the Stacks" is a fun summer read and will provide a good mental workout in crime solving. Grab yourself a copy--and a cocktail. -- Karen Gallagher, Books Editor, Daytona Beach News-Journal, April 20, 2011
From the AuthorThe DAFFODILS® now have their own blog to keep you up to date on their "between-the-books" goings-on. The blog is displayed on Mary Clay's Amazon page and is also available by email through Mary Clay's web site.