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Death on Demand series
Enjoy the beginning of the Death on Demand series
From Publishers Weekly
In Agatha-winner Hart’s winning 19th Death on Demand mystery set in Broward’s Rock, S.C. (after 2008’s Death Walked In), Annie Darling and her PI husband, Max, invite Iris Tilford, a troubled young woman who used to live in the island community and has recently returned, to a party they’re giving at the
Broward’s Rock pavilion. The party ends in tragedy with Annie and Max’s discovery of Iris’s strangled body on a path in the surrounding pine woods. Annie promises police chief Billy Cameron she won’t meddle in the investigation, but when the killer targets her and Max, she breaks her vow. The plot neatly builds to
an exciting climax in the Agatha Christie tradition, with all the suspects gathered near the scene of the crime, each with a strong motive for murder. Hart assembles her usual distinctive supporting cast, including
wacky celebrity mystery writer Emma Clyde. Readers will enjoy the many allusions to actual mystery authors
and their books, from the classic to the contemporary.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Publishers Weekly
Annie Darling, proprietor of Death on Demand, "the finest mystery bookstore north of Miami," once again proves a resourceful sleuth in Hart's scintillating 18th Death on Demand mystery set in the South Carolina island community of Broward's Rock (after 2006' Dead Days of Summer). When Annie's devoted PI husband, Max, who's busy renovating historic Franklin House, puts off returning a frantic phone call from a prospective client, Annie later discovers the caller, Gwen Jamison, dying of a gunshot wound in Gwen's house. It appears Gwen wanted to tell Max that after finding on her property eight gold coins worth nearly $2 million that were recently stolen from Gwen's employer, island civic leader Georffrey Grant, she had hidden the coins at Franklin House. When Gwen's dropout son, Robert, is implicated in both the theft and the murder, Max believes Robert's been framed and works to clear his name. This tight, Agatha Christie-style puzzler will keep readers guessing to the end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Joe's View
I didn’t know about Carolyn Hart’s long-running series of “Death on Demand” mysteries until last year when I was trying to come up with a wide variety of material for a special beach books round-up we ran in the features section of the paper.
My taste leans more toward urban hard-boiled mysteries than what the book trade calls “cozies,” but after reading only a few pages of Hart’s “Dead Days of Summer” I was hooked.
The gore quotient in the novel was low but there was nothing cozy about Hart’s approach to character, setting and, yes, murder. The Oklahoma City-based writer follows in the footsteps of Agatha Christie who knew how to build a great mystery plot around her acute studies of psychology, romance and the relationships in small communities.
Hart’s “Death on Demand” series is set on a seemingly idyllic island off the coast of South Carolina — Broward’s Rock — where the author’s amateur sleuth heroine, Annie Darling, runs the Death on Demand mystery bookstore (“the best mystery book store north of Miami”).
Annie is not a sweet old spinster in the Miss Marple mold, but a vibrant and very smart thirtysomething woman madly in love (and in lust) with her handsome husband, Max, who runs a private investigation service.
In “Dead Days of Summer,” Max was falsely accused of murder and the shadow of that experience hangs over the new book “Death Walked In,” which William Morrow is publishing Tuesday.
The Darlings are in the process of restoring a wonderful old mansion in a rather remote part of Broward’s Rock when they are sucked into a terrible case involving stolen coins and the murder of Gwen Jamison — an African-American woman who worked in the mansion where the theft took place. Although it appears the woman had no direct involvement with the theft, it becomes clear that the coins came into her possession and she hid them somewhere in the Darlings’ partially restored home just before she was killed.
The mystery deepens as it becomes obvious to Annie and Max that someone related to the wealthy owner of the coins, Geoff Grant, stole them and then murdered Gwen. The narrative takes us into the complex relationships in the Grant house where a series of marriages by Geoff has created a tangle of dissolute and very jealous step-brothers and step-sisters.
Hart’s ability to introduce and fully develop such a wide array of characters — male and female, young and old — is quite remarkable. She is more sympathetic to some than she is to others, but manages to empathize with all of them on some level.
The book also shows us how the Darlings have come to have deep reservations about the island police force as a result of Max’s harrowing experience of being railroaded on a murder charge. That experience causes Max to back Gwen’s son Robert when the cops assume the young man with a record of pot smoking and petty crime killed his mother for drug money. Max saw Robert’s face when he first learned of his mother’s death and the investigator has no doubts that the young man is innocent of the crime.
“Death Walked In” makes Broward’s Rock and the widely varied people who live there seem as real as the city block that I live on.
Hart wrote a good piece for The Washington Post last fall in which she gracefully — but forcefully — dealt with the many misconceptions that surround authors who have chosen to work in crime fiction.
She said people who ask her “When will you write a real book?” or “Why do you want to write about murder?” probably haven’t read mysteries.
“Murder is never the point of the mystery,” Hart stressed. “Mysteries are about the messes people make of their lives and how they cope…Every day we see proof that evil can triumph. But there is a world, too, where goodness prevails, where justice is served, where decency is celebrated. I and so many readers find that world in the mystery.”
When I go on vacation this summer, I plan to take a pile of earlier Hart books so that I can completely catch up with the work of this modern master of the mystery. How lucky I am to have 16 unread “Death on Demand” novels yet to be savored.
Reviewed by Joe Meyers
From The Sherbrooke Record
(HarperCollins, 2008) Broward's Rock, an island off the coast of South Carolina: the tranquility of the small community is shattered when a woman is shot. She tells bookstore proprietor Annie Darling that she has hidden something of great importance in Annie's house, but before she can tell her what it is, or where, the woman dies.
When the woman is linked to a nearby home where a valuable collection of rare gold coins has gone missing, Annie and her husband Max focus on the family living there. There are plenty of grounds for suspicion: the dysfunctional family includes the most-recent, materialistic wife of the coin collector and a shiftless stepson who dropped out of college and is looking forward to his inheritance. There are other assorted ne'er-do-wells in the village as well, including the victim's troubled sons.
Lingering over the case is the question, what was hidden in Annie and Max's home, and where? A search of Annie and Max's home turns up nothing, but when Max surprises an intruder he is shot at for his trouble. There will be other attempts, and another death, capped by the proverbial gathering of suspects in a library, before more than one villain is unmasked.
My Recommendation
Definitely at the cozy end of the spectrum, Carolyn Hart is often com-pared to Agatha Christie, but incorrectly, in my view. In Christie's novels the puzzle element is always front and center, the clues not just cleverly, but fiendishly, concealed; in Hart's novels character and setting are uppermost. A more apt comparison to Carolyn Hart's novels would be the Botswana-based stories of Alexander McCall Smith: in both, the puzzle element is secondary, and the moral setting takes on a life of its own; readers are immersed in a gentle, civilized world of mostly virtuous people where the natural order has been upset. But we can be sure that, in the end, justice will prevail.
Characteristic of Hart's other novels, Death Walked In is exactly what it purports to be: a leisurely-paced, gentle tale involving a likeable pair of amateur sleuths up against an equally-amateur criminal in an engaging (if somewhat idealized) setting. When asked about the underlying symbolism latent in everyday objects, Freud is reputed to have said, 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.' With Carolyn Hart's novels the reader in search of a pleasant, entertaining read will not be disappointed. It is what it is; nothing more, nothing less. ~ Jim Napier
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hart pulls out all the stops in the fast-paced 17th installment of her acclaimed Death on Demand cozy series (after 2005's Death of the Party), set on the South Carolina island of Broward's Rock. When bookstore owner Annie Darling's PI husband, Max, accepts a new case and fails to come home, she's frantic and calls in all her friends, including the police. The authorities organize an effective search that leads to the body of an attractive woman near Max's abandoned car; in the trunk is the murder weapon. Portrayed by the press as an unfaithful husband and killer, Max is arrested as soon as he surfaces. Annie goes undercover, determined to clear Max's name even if it means putting herself in a cunning murderer's path. Lovable supporting characters, notably Emma Clyde, resident mystery author and Annie's best friend, help make this one of Hart's finest offerings. Hart has won multiple Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Death on Demand titles
Death on Demand, 1987
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Dead Days of Summer
