Down Home Murder
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In the first in Agatha Award-winning author Toni L. P. Kelner’s smart, witty mystery series, amateur sleuth Laura Fleming finds her trip going South—in lethal ways…
They say you can’t go home again, and Laura Burnette Fleming thinks they may have a point. Moving to Boston has made her a bona fide Yankee in the eyes of her Byerly, North Carolina family. Yet Laura—forever Laurie Anne to her kin—still rushes back to see her ailing grandpa.
Paw is in a bad way, rousing just long enough to tell Laura he didn’t fall—he was attacked—before passing away. Why would anyone harm the beloved Burnette patriarch? True, the family has its share of issues lately, from Aunt Nellie’s doomed get-rich-quick schemes to Aunt Edna’s fixation with the local pastor. But surely not even the grasping cousins slyly sizing up Paw’s possessions could commit murder.
With the aid of her Shakespearean scholar husband, Richard, and her indomitable great-aunt Maggie, Laura confronts a slew of family secrets. Turns out Paw may have seen something that a killer is determined to keep quiet. And Laura will have to untangle the truth, before this homecoming leads to another homicide…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Laura Fleming is the prodigal daughter returning home to Byerly, N.C., from her adopted and very Yankee world of Boston academia. She joins her family at the bedside of ``Paw,'' the family patriarch, who was hospitalized following an accident at the textile mill where he, like most of his clan, earns a little extra money doing piecework. Just prior to lapsing into a coma, Paw whispers to Laura that this mishap was no accident. Acting on Paw's final words, Laura and her husband, Richard, a literature professor with an annoying habit of quoting Shakespeare, set out to find the killer. Many suspects--including kin--arise and then are eliminated from suspicion by the Yankee interlopers. Eventually, the two stumble upon a connection to another crime--the recent rape and murder of a local girl--which reveals the identity of the old man's killer. Kelner's first novel is replete with stock characters speaking ``southern'' (``Lord-a-mighty it is so hot out there, and as muggy as all get out''). Failing to involve readers with strong characters, this tale derives flavor not from its ingredients but from where it's served.
