Synopsis
Christmas at Frederick's department store is as festive and decorative as usual, but this year among the staff goodwill to all men is lacking - as Verity Birdwood, amateur sleuth, is soon to discover. Thoughts of murder are lurking and, for someone, this Christmas will be their last.
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From Publishers Weekly
These eight short, peppy puzzlers by Australian mystery writer Rowe ( Grim Pickings ) feature bespectacled amateur detective Verity Birdwood, who solves knotty problems with ease and doesn't mind upstaging her policeman friend Det. Sgt. Dan Toby. In the opening tale, "Forbidden Fruit," Birdie tells Dan about her first case, when, as a 14-year-old, she determined how a rich old man married to a young woman with a lover was killed at his annual neighborhood Christmas party. The closing title story describes how Birdie gathers clues and names the murderers of a department-store Santa and his photography assistant. In between, Birdie visits an isolated farm where a retarded hired hand has been accused of having strangled the farmer's wife ("Rabbit Killer") and goes to the beach, not a favored spot, where she discovers that a fellow bather has succumbed ("Death Warmed Up"). Cleverly plotted and peopled by characters deftly, if lightly, sketched, the stories skimp on Birdie, who remains a puzzle.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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