The Alpine Pursuit - An Emma Lord Mystery

Zusatztext “Daheim’s small-town characters are a mix of smart! conniving! lecherous! clumsy [and] wisecracking. . . . If you like the Cat Who mysteries by Lilian Jackson Braun! you’ll find similar fun here.” – San Antonio Express-News “SOLID PROSE! REMARKABLE CHARACTERS! AND [AN] ENTERTAINING PLOT.” –Library Journal “ALWAYS A PLEASURE.” –The Seattle Times Informationen zum Autor Mary Daheim Klappentext As her myriad of fans can attest, USA Today bestselling author Mary Daheim creates wonderful mysteries peopled with marvelous characters as quirky as they are endearing. The Seattle Times says Daheim is "one of the brightest stars in our city's literary constellation"-and the popularity of her irresistible Pacific Northwest crime series has swept across the nation. For a small town newspaper like The Alpine Advocate, a new play at the local community college is big news. Editor and publisher Emma Lord is duty-bound to attend opening night, but expects the amateur enterprise will serve only as a cure for insomnia. The play is dubbed "a black comedy," but the only laughs Emma gets are from the bad acting and the wretched script. And while the turgid production makes Wagner's Ring cycle seem like a vignette, the real drama begins just before the final curtain. Hans Berenger, dean of students, wasn't well known or well liked around Alpine, but the audience found his death scene genuinely convincing-until they realized he wasn't acting. No one can say how or when the blanks in the prop gun were replaced with the real bullets that killed Berenger, but the list of suspects reads like a playbill of the cast and crew. They all had opportunity, access, and their own axes to grind with the thespically challenged dean. Seeking the assistance of Vida Runkel, the Advocate's redoubtable House and Home editor, Emma Lord vows to unravel a mystery that spirals out into unexpected places. As Emma sets the stage for the most likely suspect, she finds herself in a two-character scene whose next cue could make the resolute editor take a final-and permanent-bow. Leseprobe One My brother, Ben, and I had flown into Rome on a dark October morning. A heavy rain fell all the way into the city from Da Vinci Airport, making it almost impossible to see through the train windows. It was eight-thirty in the morning when we got a taxi at the stazione to head for the Hotel Bramante near the Vatican. The buildings in the oldest part of the Eternal City showed their age, with bright colors dulled, wavery glass, worn wrought iron, and cracked stucco exteriors. Rome seemed as gloomy as Alpine, where it had rained for a week before I left. If this trip was my brother’s effort to raise my spirits after Tom’s death, I was afraid Ben had made a big mistake. *** An Alpine winter is even gloomier than most autumns, but I’m used to it. Changes in the weather pattern during the past century have raised temperatures, however. No longer is the mountain town snowed in from October to April. The current fall had accumulated to over four feet, but it was the third week of February and that was ordinary at the three-thousand-foot level of the Cascades. Seventy years ago Alpine was completely isolated except by train—when the locomotives could push through. We still had the trains, but we also had roads and streets, and we usually had access to the highway. Stories were still handed down about snow up to the housetops and how close the community of two hundred hardy souls became when there was virtually no contact with the outside world. Listening to the legends, it almost sounded like fun. But the good old days weren’t always so good. I was reminded of that fact when a group of Alpine residents decided to revive a theatrical tradition that had begun before World War One...

Product details

• Authors: Mary Daheim
• Publisher: Fawcett Book Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 29.03.2005
• EAN: 9780345447920
• ISBN: 978-0-345-44792-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 178 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Emma Lord; Emma Lord Mysteries (Paperback; Emma Lord
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature