The Christie Caper
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- € 4,99
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A group of Christie buffs. . .In honor of Agatha Christie's one hundredth birthday, mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance Darling plans a week-long celebration of mystery, treasure hunts, title clues, and Christie trivia. Yet even as the champagne is chilling and the happy guests begin arriving on Broward's Rock Island, Annie feels a niggling sense of doom. But the last thing she or her guests expect is that the scheduled fun and mayhem will include a real-life murder. The unexpected arrival of Neil Bledsoe, the most despised book critic in America, was sure to raise a few hackles. An advocate of hard-boiled detection and gory true crime, Bledsoe drops a bombshell on the devoted Christie assemblage: He's penning a scurrilous biography of the grand dame of suspense herself. Before the first title clue is solved, no less than two attempts are made on Bledsoe's life. Now Annie and her unflappable husband, Max Darling, find themselves trying to stop a murder in the making-only the first corpse isn't the one they're expecting. . .and it isn't the last.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hart's sixth Death on Demand novel exuberantly celebrates the centenary of Agatha Christie's birth with a clever plot and an array of puzzles for readers. With reigning English crime queen Lady Gwendolyn Thompkins, South Carolina bookstore owner Ann Darling is cohosting the Christie Caper, a week-long conference featuring author panels, a treasure hunt and gala Come-As-You-Wish-You-Were ball. Bolstered by her Laurel, her flighty mother-in-law, as well as intrepid reader Henny and husband Max, Annie thinks she can handle any contingencies--until hard-boiled crime aficionado and critic Neil Bledsoe shows up with his aunt, a Miss Marple look-alike. Bledsoe is determined to be odious, even going so far as to publicly attack Christie and her work. After Bledsoe is the victim of two suspicious accidents, Annie, Max, Henny, Laurel and Lady Gwendolyn fear that a disgruntled author, editor or agent is using the conference to exact revenge. When a would-be writer is slain, the five amateur sleuths redouble their efforts to prevent more violence. As in the past, Hart lards the text with titles, authors and characters' names, this time with a plethora of Christie trivia. For those who seek an extra challenge, Hart uses the clues to the treasure hunt as chapter titles (with answers at the end of the book).
