Mother's Day Murder

February 9, 2009
In Meier's fizzy 15th holiday-themed cozy (after 2008's St. Patrick's Day Murder
), reporter Lucy Stone, of Tinker's Cove, Maine, knows that the victim of a shooting murder, Tina Nowak, was feuding with Barbara “Bar” Hume over the popularity of their respective 16-year-old daughters, Heather and Ashley. Tinker's Cove is still reeling from the disappearance 10 months earlier of a teen youth counselor, and Bar's arrest is almost as shocking. In digging for answers regarding the alleged “killer mom,” Lucy uncovers some icky revelations about Bart Hume, Bar's philandering cardiac surgeon husband. Meier's mix of family concerns and mystery turns darker than usual after Bart's mistress is killed in a suspicious car accident, and Lucy and Sara, Lucy's high school freshman daughter, are caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Along the way, Lucy must also deal with fears about Sara's first prom date and the sleepless nights all moms must face.

March 1, 2009
Small-town life in Maine should be quiet and safe, but feuding families, high-school bullying, and the murder of a missing 16-year-old girl makes Tinker's Cove residents overprotective of their children and suspicious of one other. Another murder places Lucy Stone ("St. Patrick's Day Murder"), part-time reporter and mother of four, in the thick of things.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2009
A political rivalry ends in murder as the fate of the after-prom party hangs in the balance.

Rock-ribbed Republican Barbara Hume copped the Gun Woman of the Year award by imagining left-leaning Democrat Tina Nowak's face on every target. As long as Ashley Hume and Heather Nowak are in a dead heat for class valedictorian, Bar and Tina are equally invested in the local high school. When they end up co-chairs of the after-prom committee, it takes a steady Eddy like Lucy Stone (St. Patrick's Day Murder, 2008, etc.) to make sure that two hellcats of Tinker's Cove don't make mincemeat of each other. Unfortunately, Lucy gets distracted by family worries. Sara, a high-school freshman, gets asked to the prom by baseball star Chad Mackenzie, a player in every sense of the word. And daughter-in-law Molly is suffering through postpartum depression as Lucy's first grandchild Patrick proves to be a fussy sleeper with a voracious appetite. So Lucy passes by the Salt Aire tennis courts just too late to see someone who looks quite a bit like Bar shoot Tina through the heart. The case looks like an ace for the prosecutor. But convinced that Bar is innocent, Lucy uses all her clout as part-time reporter for the Pennysaver to find a killer with a real down-home motive.

Subplots jostle like lobsters in a trap in Meier's 16th tale of murder in Maine.

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