The Fatal Picnic / Their Nearest and Dearest

THE FATAL PICNIC The Mallory family gathers for a picnic at the park. It looks like a perfect day for it, and they all start to arrive, ready to feast and play. Then Uncle Maurice shows up. Maurice of the sadistic tongue and crude humor. His wife Esther puts on her usual brave face, but no one is pleased except the kids, who love his antics. Most of the family have good reason to hate Uncle Maurice. He swindled Jocelyn and Marvin in financial deals. He found out about Fred’s affair, and holds it over him. He torments Alison every time he sees her, belittling her unmercifully. Even his son, David, hates him, and with just cause. Maurice has spread so much poison among the Mallorys, it really comes as no surprise when the shots ring out… THEIR NEAREST AND DEAREST Salinas lettuce grower Stanley West is found murdered at his desk, shot in the chest with his own gun. At first they police are completely baffled. West had many visitors that day, but who dropped in on him that evening with such a grudge that could only be settled by murder? His wife Laverne becomes their first suspect, simply because she is his wife. Chuck Willet, a slightly shady real estate friend who wanted West to back him in a local political bid, could have been upset when West wouldn’t support his campaign. Hal Schmidt owned him a lot of money, and might have wanted to cancel a debt. But then Laverne’s daughter Patty tells the cops about a young man she had been dating, a young man from the worker camp whom her father didn’t approve of. And the cops know they have their man. Or do they?

Bernice Carey was born in Chetek, Wisconsin on June 27, 1910, the granddaughter of Danish immigrants. As a teenager, Carey moved to California, graduating in 1928 from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where she served as a reporter on the school newspaper. That same year she married Walter Fitch, a mechanical engineer. During the couple’s fourteen years of marriage, they resided in various towns across the state, including Ventura, Monterey and Salinas, where they were influenced by progressive political ideology. During this time, Carey published poems, short stories and book reviews in local newspapers and literary magazines. After her marriage to Fitch broke up, Carey married high school teacher Dick Martin. Encouraged by her new husband, Carey in 1949 published The Reluctant Murderer, the first of her eight highly-praised crime novels. After publishing her final crime novel in 1955, Carey spent the latter years of her life in Los Gatos surrounded by family and friends. She died at the age of 79 on February 8, 1990.