A Misty Mourning (Torie O'Shea Mysteries, No. 4) - Softcover

MacPherson, Rett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312977840 ISBN 13: 9780312977849

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2001

Synopsis

A ten-hour car trip with your eighty-year-old grandmother is never much fun, especially if you're seven months pregnant. But when Torie O'Shea's longtime family friend Clarissa Hart Campbell insists that she and Grandma Gert come for a visit at her West Virginia boarding house, they just can't say no to the 101-year-old dynamo.

Upon their arrival, Torie and Gert find Clarissa has called together her entire family for the reading of her new will. But everything's happening too fast, even for Clari: the next morning, she's found murdered in bed. The new will stands, and her lawyer follows through on the old woman's wishes to settle an eighty-year-old debt to Torie's great-grandmother: The Panther Run Boarding House now belongs to Torie. Mystified, Torie must put her genealogy skills to work to determine what secrets worth killing for may be hiding in the dilapidated boarding house and the Campbell family story-before it's too late.

A comical blend of history and homicide, A Misty Mourning is another delightfully witty entry in Rett MacPherson's popular cozy series.

About this title

About the Author

The author of three previous Torie O'Shea mysteries, including most recently, A Comedy of Heirs, Rett MacPherson lives in a suburb of St. Louis, MO.

From Kirkus Reviews

Her fourth outing (A Comedy of Heirs, 1999, etc.) finds genealogist Torie O'Shea visiting West Virginia coal mining country. Seven months pregnant, but still perky, she's accompanied by her scatterbrained but equally perky grandmother. Clarissa Hart, a friend of Torie's great-grandmother, has summoned them to Clarissa's boardinghouse for a reading of her will. It looks mighty suspicious when Torie is found standing over Clarissa's body holding a pillow-especially after the revelation that Clarissa's left Torie the historic boardinghouse. In Dickensian (but still perky) fashion, the family lawyer reveals that the will is brand-new, and newly high-tech: Clarissa e-mailed it to him, thwarting whoever tried to burn a copy of it. The new will provides more suspects: mysterious boarder Norville Gross receives $50,000, while Sherise Tyler, another boarder with undisclosed local ties, gets nothing. Clarissa's children-elderly country boy Lafayette, ne'er-do-well Edwin, and Appalachian princess Maribelle-prefer the old will. When Sheriff Justice (really) arrives, he discovers Norville Gross, apparently killed by a panther. As the sheriff interrogates Torie, she interrogates the past. Torie questions the boardinghouse inhabitants, her relatives, and the townspeople, enlisting a cousin's help at the local library. An 80-year-old lynching in the boardinghouse front yard suggests that great-grandma kept some deadly secrets. Torie will need all her research skills and an Appalachian deus ex machina (the boardinghouse elevator) to protect herself and her grandmother.The past is more dramatic and plausible than the present, where nothing, certainly not murder, dampens Torie's perkiness. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312977840
• ISBN 13: 9780312977849
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255