Murder in the Mess Hall

Abby Singleton, the middle-aged wife of a First Sergeant, mother of two teenaged daughters, and part-time tour escort for the U. S. Army Recreation Center in Baumfelder, Germany, leads a busy and fulfilling life. But when her upstairs neighbor is discovered buck-naked, face-down on a mess hall table, surrounded by parsley, with an apple in her mouth, and very, very deadAbbys placid life is turned upside-down.

Andy Morton, a young Lieutenant in the Armys Criminal Investigation Division, and friend of the Singleton family, is assigned to investigate the case. He turns to Abby for help. The wives of the First Battalion, Seventy-Eighth Armorall friends of Abbyrefuse to talk openly with the investigators, and Andy asks Abby to try and gather information from them during a Ladies Shopping Tour which is scheduled for the following weekend. Abby is reluctant to spy on her friends, but agrees simply to listen and report any suspicious information to Andy.

During the shopping tour to picturesque Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, she is sickened and dismayed to learn that Sugar Kane had either done harmor threatened to do harmto nearly every one of the women in the group. She begins to look at each of her friends with suspicion. The knowledge that she had no personal grudge against Sugar, and no motive to kill that distasteful woman, is but a small comfort to her.

But her comfort is short-lived, for when Abby is once again back home in Baumfelder, Andy shares some shocking information with her. Sugar was strangled with a silky blue cordand Abby recognizes it as the same cord that ties the collar of her new blue blouse! This is only the beginning of the evidence which begins to pile up against Abby. She is soon arrested by German Police Captain Krause and taken to the Baumfelder City Jail, where she is charged with murder.

The real murderer has been clever about targeting Abby with several vital pieces of evidence, and she is soon distraught and panickyconvinced that shell have to spend the rest of her life in a German prison. How can she prove her innocence and save herself? Her freedom depends on remembering one tiny detail that will prove who the real murderer is. Will you notice what that tiny detail is as you read Murder in the Mess Hall?