The Trouble With Thin Ice - Hardcover

Crespi, Camilla T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060177268 ISBN 13: 9780060177263

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1993

Synopsis

In this keenly plotted and atmospheric mystery, Simona Griffo - the New York ad exec and transplanted Italian who loves to cook and solve murders - finds herself skidding on ice as she attempts to help find a friend.
Simona joins her lover, Stan Greenhouse, and his fourteen-year-old son, Willy, on a trip to Connecticut for the holidays, so that they can get to know each other better, and to attend the wedding of Greenhouse's old friend, Kesho. However, Willy quickly reveals that he'd rather not have Simona around.
To make matters worse, Christmas Eve dinner turns sour when a conflict erupts over Kesho and her finance's plans to buy Rock-Perch, a local house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Though the current owner, Elisabeth Dobson, is anxious to sell, the rest of her family violently objects upon hearing the plan that night at the table. They are indignant not only because Kesho is black, but because her parents were once domestics in the Dobson household. Kesho, for her part, is outraged by their response.
Unsettled by the dinner and frustrated by Willy's behaviour, Simona takes a midnight walk near a snowy lake and discovers a body. Elisabeth Dobson has been murdered, and Kesho is suspect number one.
Over Greenhouse's objections, Simona uses her itchy nose and the fragile alliance she gradually builds with Willy to sniff out the killer. The happy result is justice, friendship, and a satisfying new recipe, a Simona Griffo mystery trademark.

About this title

Reviews

Brisk and continuously engaging, this mystery is the hardcover debut of amateur sleuth Simona Griffo, seen before in The Trouble with a Small Raise , etc . An Italian transplant living in Greenwich Village, the 37-year-old Simona and her lover, Greenhouse, travel to the picturesque but financially shaky Sleepy Hollow Inn in upscale Fieldston, Conn., to attend the New Year's Eve wedding of their friends Kesho and Richard. Also along is Willy, Greenhouse's precocious, hostile 14-year-old son. Simona discovers the body of elderly Elisabeth Dobson in the icy waters of the inn's pond, with one of Kesho's earrings nearby. Kesho is arrested for the murder. Shrewd Simona plunges into the action, uncovering plenty of hostility among the aristocratic, often unsavory Dobsons. Was Elisabeth killed because she had planned to sell her Frank Lloyd Wright estate to Kesho, an African American whose parents were the Dobson's servants? Whatever happened to Elisabeth's husband Walter, who vanished without a trace eight years earlier? When Greenhouse, an NYPD homicide investigator, is called away, Simona and Willy form an uneasy alliance to produce a number of surprises. Rich in atmosphere and buoyed by wry wit, Crespi's briskly paced narrative calls for an encore.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Sleepy Hollow Inn of Fieldston, Connecticut, is hardly sleepy in this fourth Simona Griffo mystery (the first three were paperback originals from Zebra). Adperson Griffo treks to the inn at Christmas with her love, divorced NYPD homicide detective Stan Greenhouse, and his 14-year-old son, Willy, for the wedding of the Greenhouses' friend, successful children's book author Kesho Larson, to restaurateur Richard Mentani. Tensions rise at Christmas Eve dinner, when local widow Elizabeth Dobson announces that she's selling RockPerch, her Frank Lloyd Wright house, to an interracial couple. Next morning, Griffo stumbles upon Dobson's corpse. The victim's self-important brother-in-law and his prim wife and intense son are obvious suspects, as are the almost-newlyweds (both have surprising past ties to RockPerch), the inn's owner, and others from among the local citizenry and constabulary. When his mother's illness drags Greenhouse off to Florida, Simona and Willy must face their suspicions about each other and various suspects while dodging a desperate killer. Griffo's Roman birth and globe-circling past as a diplomat's daughter set her apart from other female amateur sleuths; her "troubles" are well-plotted, entertaining puzzles. Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060177268
• ISBN 13: 9780060177263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 273