Customer Reviews

The Body in the Sleigh: A Faith Fairchild Mystery (Faith Fairchild Mysteries)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's holiday time and the Fairchild Family, Faith, Tom, Ben and Amy are spending it in their summer cottage on Sanpere Island on the coast of Maine. Maine you ask? In the middle of winter? That's just crazy. But, Tom is recuperating from major surgery and the family decides to go to their cottage where he can relax and have a pleasant, quiet recuperation. Still, just like Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote, whenever Faith shows up anywhere, the dead bodies start to pile up. Although, things start out very quietly, family time together, watching ice boaters, snow shoeing in the woods and a lot of reading, things are about to happen.

Faith takes the children to town one morning to take Christmas pictures in front of the Sanpere Historical Society. They had decorated an old sleigh with Christmas packages and a couple of manikins dressed up in antique costumes. But, as Faith is taking the pictures she notices that there are three manikins. And, the third figure turns out to be a dead body. The victim is Norah Taft, a young woman who had lived on Sanpere during the summer months and just recently had come back to live full time with her mother. She was apparently a drug addict and had committed suicide. Many people on the Island remembered her fondly and were very disturbed by her death.

In the meantime, also on the island, a local woman, Mary Bethany, who raises goats comes upon a newborn baby boy in her barn on Christmas Eve. The only indications of his identity are a note asking Mary to raise the baby as well as a lot of cash. Mary asks Faith to help her find the identity of the baby's mother and during their investigation they find that the truth behind the child abandonment is connected somehow to Norah's death.

This book is a page-turner. Ms. Page is wonderful as usual and ties everything up at the end with her usual talent. She is a great story teller and has won about every prize given to Mystery Authors. However, I've read all of her previous books about Faith Fairchild (17) and they all had a certain light-heartedness about them. This book is entirely different. It is much darker but the story is really excellent. The plots jump around a little but, if you read this author's books like I do you don't put it down long enough to get confused. Excellent job, Ms. Page. I'm so relieved you haven't decided to have Faith go after a group of vegetarian vampires. They are really getting old. Thanks for the great read.

Faith Fairchild and her family spend Christmas together at their cottage on Sanpere Island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. At a local store, Faith finds the corpse of a teen named Norah in an antique sleigh. She assumes the young girl died from an overdose as there are no visible marks on the girl, but the police suspect her boyfriend is her killer.

On Christmas Eve goat farmer Mary Bethany calls Faith asking for help. Mary explains she has found a newborn boy with an enigmatic note and $50,000 inside her barn. While her husband the Reverend recovers from gallstone removal surgery, Faith searches for the biological mother. She locates college student Miriam whose boyfriend is a dealer. The amateur sleuth and the mom are in trouble from those who want both dead.

This is an exciting Christmas mystery as Faith and her family celebrates the holiday season together by her investigating the homicide and the baby abandonment while her spouse recovers from surgery with good cheer from the brood especially the children. The story line is fast-paced with two underlying messages of the lucrative drug trafficking is everywhere as the economics supersedes the law and the ethics, and the Fairchild family wishing everyone a happy holiday season with recipes and good cheer to all.

Harriet Klausner

My intro to this series and possibly not the best choice since readers with a foundation in it are enthusiastic. There is not much sleuthing here. We guess the "who" and "why" early on and then, through various points of view, discover the "how." Passable but not compelling though I enjoyed the descriptions of a Maine winter landscape. Did not inspire me to explore the other titles, but I very much appreciated the addenda dedicating the text to librarians.

I felt it was not as good as her previous books. It did end as happily as it could but it didn't leave you with a happy feeling.

While I must admit I'm glad the Fairchilds evidently had about nine good Christmases (since The Body in the Boullion) during which Faith didn't find any bodies, I loved this account of their Christmas on Sanpere--with all the coziness of familiar friends and landscape and Faith's peerless cooking. Despite the familiarity, this book reads a bit differently from the rest of the series--I think because Mary Bethany and Miriam Carpenter are characters very close to the author's heart. She paints their portraits in detail usually reserved for Faith and her closest associates. They are more poignant characters, as well, with none of Faith's charmed life. (If tripping over bodies left and right can be part of a charmed life, rather than the cause of post-traumatic stress syndrome.) Because of that, parts of the story are sadder than the other books; but it is filled with the great hope and redemption befitting a Christmas tale. Page succeeded brilliantly with this one, and I give the novel five stars despite my frustration that Nan and Freeman Hamilton--two of my favorite Sanpere characters, who first appeared in The Body in the Kelp--are called Nan and Freeman Marshall in this book. I enjoy this series very much but would enjoy it more without these inconsistencies that crop up now and then.

So nice to see Faith and family here on Sanpere in the winter, though I did miss Pix and their gang. I always delight in Katherine's descriptions of this area of Maine -- my own back yard. Having grown up in NYC, married and started a family outside of Boston. . . I've been "friends" with Faith for sometime time, looking forward to each new book as a special "treat," (figuratively as well as literally -- I've compiled my own recipe box of "Have Faith" concoctions!)

I'm already anxiously awaiting the next "Body In The. . ." book, though I know it will unfortunately mean another murder -- it will also mean new recipes!

Can hardly wait for her next book to be published. Between the wonderful mystery, and her cookbook you can not go wrong.
An easy read, but yet you have to weigh who did it.

As Mary entered the barn to milk her goats, the first thing she spotted was a large basket with a big red bow, nestled against a bale of hay. It must be a gift from a neighbor. A tag hung from the bow: "For Mary Bethany." She ignored the goats for a moment and knelt down before the gift. It was an afghan in soft pastel colors. That would be Arlene Harvey who crocheted so beautifully. But this was too much! It must have taken Arlene a long time to make. Then she heard a tiny sneeze. The merest whisper of a sneeze. She pulled back the blanket and she uncovered - a baby! "You poor thing," she said aloud. "Who are you? And how could anyone bear to give you up?" She pulled the afghan out of the basket. Underneath it was an envelope with her name on it, some baby clothes, diapers, bottles and a package wrapped in brown paper. The note was short. `Dear Mary, Keep him safe and raise him to be a good man. His name is Christopher.' And to Mary's surprise, when she opened the package she found packets of hundred dollar bills. A lot of hundred-dollar bills.

Mary found her beautiful gift on Christmas Eve but her friend Faith had found a not so pleasant gift a few days before. Faith had taken her son and daughter round to see the different Christmas decorations of Sanpere Island in Maine. While viewing the antique sleigh in front of the Sanpere Historical Society, she discovers that there are more than mannequins posed with packages in the sleigh. There has been an addition of a young girl's body added to the scene. Is she possibly Christopher's mother? If not, is there a connection between the discoveries of the girl's body, the money and Christopher?

The Body in the Sleigh is written with a Christmas theme but it's enjoyable reading no matter what time of year it might be. It would find myself reading "just one more page" to see if there is a connection and if so, what that connection might be. I've enjoyed The Body in the Sleigh enough that I plan to back up and read more of the Faith Fairchild Mysteries.

This is the 18th book in Katherine Hall Page's Faith Fairchild Mystery series.

The Fairchild family is spending the holiday season at their summer get-a-way in Sanpere, Maine as Pastor Tom recuperates from major surgery on the quiet island. But it doesn't remain quiet for long, as Faith takes the children, Ben and Amy, to a park to pose for their annual Christmas photo, Faith discovers that her perfect background, a sleigh, does not just have a couple of manikins aboard but also a dead body tucked nicely between them. The victim is a young woman who used to spend summers on the island and is known to many of the island residents, known very well by one resident.

As if the dead body isn't enough, one of the island residents, who raises nanny goats on her farm, finds a baby boy in her manger on the morning of Christmas Eve, along with a huge sum of money for his care, and calls Faith to help her find the mother. While Faith is trying to sleuth out the mother's identity, she realizes there is a connection to the body she found in the sleigh.

Once you start this book you will not be able to put it down, but this is not your typical Faith Fairchild mystery, I found it much more gripping than her previous books. The characters are great although I missed some of the regulars, but there are new ones who are very dark and deceitful. There is still the wit and humor, the wonderful backdrop of Christmas, and the faith and hope that everything will work out.

There are also two bonuses in this book. There are more yummy recipes, of course, but the pure treat is a wonderful tribute to librarians. It brought back many memories of my own time spent in the library of my hometown.

The Body in the Sleigh: A Faith Fairchild Mystery (Faith Fairchild Mysteries)

I have read and love all the "Body in the ?" mysteries and this one, while not my favorite is another winner. Faith Fairchild is one of my favorite characters. Love her and her family. My only complaint is we don't get a new book often enough.