Martha's Vineyard Mystery (Riggs)

Martha's Vineyard has been home to Victoria Trumbull for most of her ninety-two years. Its magic, history, and picture-perfect calm are part of her very being. Like other Islanders, she knows the sounds of the sea in calm and stormy weather-and she knows sounds that do not belong. One evening, Victoria is waiting on the dock for her granddaughter to return with the harbormaster when she hears a chilling scream followed by a splash and the sound of tires skidding on sand. She investigates and discovers a mutilated body floating on the outgoing tide. Despite interruptions from her granddaughter Elizabeth, the harbormaster Domingo, a swarm of Island locals, and a few mysterious visitors, Victoria manages to get in a good bit of detective work and still find time to cook her traditional Saturday-night supper of Boston baked beans. She even concocts a scheme to trap the killer. But she'll need to act quickly because victim number two has already been found.

Victoria Trumbull is a feisty ninety-two-year-old who refuses to let her age stop her from having fun-or investigating crime. When Victoria's knowledge of her native Martha's Vineyard helped to solve a murder in Deadly Nightshade, she earned her own baseball cap emblazoned with "West Tisbury Police Deputy." Now the authorities will turn to her again to help uncover another scandal on the idyllic island. Phoebe Eldridge, a short-tempered woman who lives alone, has sold the family land to a developer who made an offer that seemed too good to resist. When the Conservation Trust enlists Victoria to search that land for an endangered plant, she and her eleven-year-old after-school assistant are rewarded with the discovery of a little nest of cranefly orchids-and a body. If Victoria isn't careful, a killer might take her off the endangered list-and make her extinct.

There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in Martha's Vineyard, not to mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians-she has a cutoff shoe to accommodate her bunion and a stout stick to help her on her walks across the fields and in the woods-but she is as sharp and as sharp-eyed as the proverbial tack. So it's not odd that when Victoria is the only one who notices something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury cemetery, the chief listens. And something is indeed amiss. Responding to a request by presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying elsewhere, things go wrong from the start. The driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the Island ferry trip in a rainstorm. Other deaths-some of them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious-follow. And when, as a last measure, the coffin is found, dug up, and opened, it does not contain the expected body. Adding insult to injury, the coffin itself disappears. Meanwhile, the bedroom for rent in Victoria's house has been taken over by a woman and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty millionaire's heir. Victoria is graceful about her unwanted boarders, but they do interfere with her newspaper column-and with her efforts to discover whether the strange antics of the coffin are related to the murders. Victoria is the most realistic and most delightful nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence nor her sharp wit.

Cynthia Riggs has no problem making readers believe that her feisty protagonist can be almost indispensable to the new police chief. The years just seem to have sharpened ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull's mind, and she's got an encyclopedic knowledge of her fellow West Tisbury residents and their forebears. But most readers do wonder how the old lady came to be made the chief's official deputy. Author Cynthia Riggs obligingly offers that story here. Chief Casey O'Neill has been trying to win acceptance in her new job. She is an off-Islander-and a woman. What's more, she no sooner starts work than a church sexton dies suddenly from what is believed natural causes. But soon other elderly citizens begin to die unexpectedly, and it becomes apparent that there is a serial killer abroad. Casey has had plenty of experience with homicide in the big city she came from, but only on an island like Martha's Vineyard could she have found a serial killer who does his dirty work using a town custom of sharing an occasional special dish with one's neighbors. At the same time, the usual tranquility of West Tisbury is roiled by a feud between the newly retired minister of the local Congregational church and his successor-both called Jack. And while men of God are supposed to bring harmony to their flock, these two pastors have managed to divide the town into factions. Is there a connection between this rivalry and the murders? This delightful listen has a strong sense of place and a list of charming and eccentric characters.

Cynthia Riggs draws from a lifetime's intimacy with fabled Martha's Vineyard and its people to create an irresistible series filled with murder and a unique atmosphere. When Colley Jameson, the unpopular, egocentric editor of the Island Enquirer abruptly cancels Victoria Trumbull's weekly column, the ninety-two-year-old Martha's Vineyard native takes her reporting skills to the competition and immediately outscoops the Enquirer-with a murder story. Body parts of a local man wash up at two separate locations, and an investigation reveals that he was having an affair with a woman who is fatally poisoned-and just happens to be one of Jameson's ex-wives. A third victim connected to the newspaperman coincides with a series of fake obituaries detailing the ruthless editor's own demise. Certain she's the only person on the island with enough insight to save his skin-and his newspaper-Colley tells Victoria to name her price, before a killer terminates his career ... permanently. Served by her in-depth knowledge of the island, her sharp wit, and her indomitable drive, the sheriff's deputy is on the trail again: bunions, lilac-bough cane, and all.

Victoria Trumbull, a ninety-two-year-old native of Martha's Vineyard, and her granddaughter, Elizabeth, spot a man in trouble near the top of a cliff. Elizabeth goes for help, but the man dies before he can be rescued. The man had been hired as a consultant on the proposed building of a controversial casino. The police call it an accident, but his death is just the first in what becomes a series of baffling murders. Victoria, now a deputy police officer after proving her value in fighting crime on the island, is on the case, assisted by her Native American friend Dojan Minnowfish. Her new official position gives her the confidence to take risks that horrify the police chief. But Victoria compensates for her physical limitations by out-thinking the murderers. Murders involving a Harley Davidson and Indian motorcyclists' rally, tribal disputes, squabbling developers, and deeply buried family secrets are only part of the allure of this charming mystery. As in her previous books, Cynthia Riggs captures the rich and varied setting of Martha's Vineyard-from colorful Gay Head cliffs to the motorcyclists' campground where Indian pipes blossom and die-in this stunning sixth Victoria Trumbull adventure.

It's a case of cold feet-and cold-blooded murder-as ninety-two-year-old poet/sleuth Victoria Trumbull gets more than she bargained for after hosting an ill-fated wedding.A wedding on picturesque Martha's Vineyard promises to be the affair of the season when Penny Arbuthnot asks her cousin, feisty ninety-two-year-old poet Victoria Trumbull, if she can use her property for the reception. Victoria agrees-but she has no idea what's in store for the hapless couple. For one, Penny is seriously in debt and desperate to marry money. She thinks she's on the road to riches when she hooks Rocco Bufano, whose father is a multi-billionaire. But unbeknownst to Penny, Rocco's been disowned by dad. He's also in hock up to his ears and thinks he's bagged the catch of a lifetime in a wealthy Vineyard native. He also knows that someone is out to kill him. In fact, several guests have a reason to off Rocco, among them an autistic savant with a prodigious knowledge of murder weapons. Victoria has assumed the reception will be a modest lemonade-and-gingersnap affair-but when a body is found in her cellar, it may be a happily-never-after in Widow's Wreath, the fourteenth engaging installment in Cynthia Riggs' beloved Martha's Vineyard mysteries.