Mudlark: A Mystery - Hardcover

Simonson, Sheila

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031209874X ISBN 13: 9780312098742

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

A newcomer to the Shoalwater Peninsula in Washington, Lark Dodge becomes involved in a dispute between those who want to preserve the area's beaches and those who welcome resort development.

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Reviews

An enthusiastic welcome back to Lark Dodge, the former bookstore owner, who, in her third appearance (after Skylark ), lives on the coast of Washington State with her husband Jay, who runs a police training program. Lark first meets Bonnie Bell, a neighbor recently moved from Santa Monica, Calif., after the aspiring writer finds a carpetbag of dead seagulls on her porch with a note saying, "California Carpetbagger Go Home." Bonnie's next unwelcome discovery is a corpse on the beach. The victim, Cleo Cabot Hagan, had been working to bring a locally unpopular resort complex into the ecologically sensitive region. The day before she was killed, Cleo had visited another neighbor, her ex-husband, novelist Tom Linquist. After his house is firebombed, Tom stays with Lark and Jay. While Lark finds him friendly enough, she is worried that her new friend Bonnie is falling for a murder suspect. Sharp characterization--particularly of the marvelously wry Lark--and a mystery that is skillfully intertwined with Lark and Jay's life as they try to start a family grip the reader's interest up to a resolution that puts an intriguing twist on the standard sleuth-in-danger finale.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A new scene--and third venture (Larkspur, Skylark)--for California's ex-bookstore-owner Lark Dodge. Here, she and policeman-professor husband Jay have moved to a tacky house on Shoalwater Peninsula in Washington State, hoping the quiet life will spur Lark's pregnancy. But life there turns out to be not so quiet when new neighbor Bonnie Bell has a bag of dead seagulls left on her porch; writer Tom Lindquist's house down the road is set afire--and his ex-wife Cleo is found murdered on a nearby beach. It all seems related to the proposed development of some seashore land--a prospect being bitterly opposed by newspaper editor Annie McKay, married to Bob, scion of the Peninsula's richest and most influential family. Meanwhile: Who killed Cleo? That puzzle gets short shrift in the chronicle of domestic doings that absorb Lark and her neighbors. Scraping, sanding, painting, arranging furniture; salad-, soup-, and pie-making--the reader gets a rundown on all of it, and more. The murder solution, when it finally arrives, is pallid and inconclusive by contrast. Breezy, harmless stuff--but the author's talents might be better used in a how-to. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031209874X
• ISBN 13: 9780312098742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228