Review: A poison pen letter and disappearing skeleton
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 2, 2012
Opening line: "The long, wet spring had finally turned the corner into a Connecticut summer so glorious that the residents of Old Wethersfield decided among ourselves it had probably been worth the wait."The protagonist, Kate Lawrence, and her daughter, Emma, are out for a walk, watching the swans in a local pond, chatting about their immediate plans. Kate snaps photos of the swans - two parent swans with their four little cygnets - to document their progress.Kate is co-owner of MACK Realty and Emma, a paralegal, is launching a real estate law practice with a friend. The morning walk mixes business with pleasure. Mother and daughter admire properties as they hike "the loop" where "nearly every Cape Cod, Colonial, Victorian and farmhouse along our route shone with fresh paint and liberally applied elbow grease."So what can go wrong on such a glorious summer morning? The answer waits in Kate's office. Someone has sent her the stinking bud of a corpse flower and a clipping about the plant's anticipated flowering at the end of June. The anonymous gift is wrapped in a sheet of paper with scribbling in the margin: "It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink."The poison pen letter is almost ignored in the confusion that results when a plumber finds a skeleton hidden in an historic house belonging to "the Henstock girls." The "girls" are the spinster sisters Ada and Lavinia, now in their eighties.By the time the cops arrive, the skeleton has disappeared. It promptly turns up in photos Kate took of the swans swimming serenely in the pond, and the anonymous letter writer strikes again. There's another clipping about the stinky corpse flower and this time the scribbling reads: "The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike."So much for a ho-hum life in the quaint little town of Wethersfield.The poison pen letters seem directed to Kate, who is on the verge of cohabitation with Armando, an attractive South American transplant who is the controller of a telecommunications company. However, the letters could as easily be directed to her two partners: Margo, a southern belle who is in a relationship with a cop named John, and "Strutter," a Jamaican immigrant, whose husband is also named John.Kate is a magnet for trouble. She's tailed by someone driving a black van. The man knocks on her door late at night. Does she call the cops? No, she calls one of her partners and the cops come swarming in. Meanwhile, the plumber who discovered the skeleton in the Henstock house is nowhere to be found - fake ID, non-working cell phone number.And what about those pesky letters? When Kate is mugged in a parking lot, the investigation kicks into high gear.Kate is an amateur sleuth in the tradition of Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher, attuned to the people in her small town, pooh-poohing any perceived danger to herself, quick to give others the benefit of a doubt.Some minor nitpicks: In one place, Kate's relationship with Armando lasted 8 years; in another it's 7 years; and in yet another she has known him for 5 years. Also, Margo's speech is full of dropped "g's" when a couple of instances would have sufficed.This was a comfort read that I hated to see end. Like Kate, I was caught up in the goings-on in Wethersfield, curious about the skeleton and the fate of the two old sisters and wondering how Kate would adjust to Armando's moving in with her.