A Conventional Corpse
by By Hess, Joan
Category: Fiction , Mystery & Detective , General

Farberville, Arkansas, is playing host to its first-ever mystery convention with five major mystery writers - each representing a different subgenre of the mystery world - making the trek to the local college for "Murder Comes to Campus." Bookseller Claire Malloy is looking forward to meeting some of her favorite writers and, of course, selling books to the attendees. But her plans for a calm, profitable weekend are soon laid to waste when the organizer is hospitalized and Claire is dragooned into running the show. To make matters worse, the feared, distrusted, and disliked mystery editor of Paradigm House, Roxanne Small, puts in an unscheduled appearance at the conference to the surprise of all and the delight of few. With Claire's own love-life woes with local police detective Peter Rosen added in, things have never been worse.Until things get worse. One of the conference attendees dies in a car accident, Wimple the cat disappears from Claire's home and now cannot be located, and Roxanne Small is nowhere to be found - making it evident that in Farberville the murder mystery is more than a literary genre.