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Books
for March 2008
TURN
UP THE HEAT
By Jessica Conant Park and Susan Conant
There has been
a murder at Simmer, a popular Boston restaurant, in the
third in a series about gourmet Chloe Parker from daughter-and-mother
writing team Conant-Park and Conant (after 2007's Simmer
Down). When Leandra, a Simmer server, turns up strangled
with her own apron strings in a seafood delivery truck belonging
to Owen, the fiancé of Chloe's best friend, Adrianna,
there are plenty of suspects. She wasn’t a popular
person with the restaurant's staff. Did they hate her because
she was girlfriend of Simmer's owner? Chloe discovers Owen's
been lying to Adrianna about something important, and embezzlement
is on the menu. The enterprising gourmet decides to check
out that delivery truck one more time, and she winds up
in a heap of danger.
OF
ALL SAD WORDS
By Bill Crider
Crider's
15th Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery (after 2007's Murder Among
the OWLS) pits the Texas lawman against a local drug ring.
Rhodes is skeptical when Clearview , Tex. , newcomer C.P.
Benton laments that his neighbors, the Crawford brothers,
are brewing up methamphetamine but the Crawford trailer
explodes, leaving one of the brothers dead. It wasn’t
meth they were cooking but moonshine. The surviving Crawford
brother isn’t talking but Rhodes doesn't buy it that
the dead brother was acting alone. A second still turns
up, and Rhodes must ignore his bickering deputies and a
whiny county commissioner to get to the bottom of the situation.
Crider skillfully describes this small Texas town and its
populace.
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