Dead Crazy (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 5) - Hardcover

Pickard, Nancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896218546 ISBN 13: 9780896218543

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 1989

Synopsis

Jenny Cain's wish to establish a recreation hall for the mentally ill in the basement of a burned-out building is thwarted when a man is killed there and it appears the killer may be mentally ill

About this title

About the Author:

Nancy Pickard has won numerous mystery awards for her short stories and novels, including an Anthony Award for Say No to Murder, a Macavity Award for Marriage Is Murder, and two Agatha Awards for Best Novel, for Bum Steer in 1990 and I.O.U in 1991. She was also nominated for an Edgar Award for I.O.U. A former reporter and editor, she is a past president of Sisters in Crime, the international association of mystery writers and fans. She lives in Kansas.

From Publishers Weekly:

Last seen in Marriage Is Murder , Jenny Cain, goodhearted but admirably disciplined director of the Port Frederick, Mass., Civic Foundation, skillfully utilizes intuition and steely nerves to solve two brutal slayings. When MaryDell Paine, wealthy and pompous do-gooder, appeals to the foundation for funds to renovate an old church basement as a recreation hall for former mental patients, it quickly becomes apparent that her altruism is tempered with urgent need. Her brother Kitt, a paranoid schizophrenic, has become a drain on the family's patience and finances. Jenny finds the site to be ideal, and begins to canvass the area, discovering a number of neighbors whose bizarre reactions to the renovation both provoke and intrigue her. When one of the neighbors is found slashed to death in the basement, suspicion falls on Kitt, and when another homeowner is discovered murdered in her living room, the search for Kitt intensifies, bringing Jenny into close cooperation with the able local police. A well-controlled sense of the absurd runs beneath the surface of the narrative, and Pickard is also deft at sharply rendering her characters' strong personalities. The plot eventually widens to include extortion and blackmail, all adeptly ferreted out by Jenny, as independent and imaginative as ever in her fifth mystery.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0896218546
• ISBN 13: 9780896218543
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 394