Recently retired from teaching high school English for nearly forty years, Ernestine Carpenter freely admits that she's more than a bit nosy. She is also good at solving problems, and she's let it be known, amongst her many friends and relatives, that she's willing to take on interesting jobs.Mary Tucker McElroy, well known as a patron of the arts in Southern literary circles, hires Ernie (as she is called by her nearest and dearest) to help her figure out which of her circle might have murdered one of their own. The group had gathered for the Christmas festivities at Idlewild, Miss McElroy's ancestral home in north central Mississippi, and one guest, writer Sukey Lytton, turned up dead in the pond one day, an apparent suicide.Six months afterwards, Miss McElroy is convinced that Sukey Lytton was murdered, and she wants Ernie to help her figure out the guilty party. Was it Lurleen Landry, best-selling author of Southern women's fiction? Did Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Russell Bertram kill her? Or was it his nasty, vindictive wife Alice? Maybe it was literary enfant terrible Brett Doran, who seems to have more than one secret to hide. Could Sukey Lytton's missing manuscript be the motive? Ernie finds danger lurking in unexpected places at Idlewild, as the killer continues to strike.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Fans of the traditional stately home murder case can rejoice the genre is alive and well in James's second mystery (after 2000's Cruel as the Grave). If Idlewild, a Mississippi manse, had a butler, you could be sure he'd be the murderer. Mary Tucker McElroy, Idlewild's matriarch and a belle of iron, summons her proteges ostensibly to help her with her memoirs. In truth, she suspects one is a killer. Six months before, Sukey Lytton, a young woman writer whose viciousness had endeared her to no one, drowned. Her death was declared a suicide, but Mary Tucker thinks otherwise. To help her find the guilty party she hires Ernestine Carpenter, a retired schoolteacher in whom 40 years teaching high school English have instilled an iron will of her own. The guests assemble a motley crew of disagreeable literati whose conversation turns the dinner table into an arena for verbal gladiatorial combat. Sukey, it seems, wrote a novel, which is now missing. In it, she revealed the guests' darkest secrets. Stately homes all have dark secrets, even if the ones here turn out to be relatively tame. The final disagreeable guest to arrive is a literary agent loathed by all. Most disagreeably, he has found Sukey's manuscript: The die is cast. Before long, bodies lie draped about like antimacassars. Ernestine is a determined, if not very plausible, sleuth; but then nothing is truly plausible in this book. Still, it's fun to revisit the old stately home. Agent, Nancy Yost. (May)There's also a simultaneous trade paper edition ($13.95 ISBN 1-57072-183-1).
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Author
A seventh-generation Mississippian now transplanted to Texas, Dean James grew up with scads of cousins all over the place, none of whom has ever married one another as far as he knows. Sitting around on porches on hot summer days, listening to adults telling stories, he decided he wanted to tell stories, too. He wrote his first novel when he was twelve and has been making up stories ever since. No matter where those stories are set, something Southern creeps in, because he thinks that growing up Southern was like living in the middle of every one of Shakespeare's plays all at once. Comedy, drama, tragedy, farce--they're with you every day; all you have to do is choose.
When he's not thinking up stories, Dean is the Manager of "Murder by the Book", Houston's nationally known mystery specialty bookstore. He is the co-author, with Jean Swanson, of By a Woman's Hand: A Guide to Mystery Fiction by Women (second edition, Berkley Prime Crime, 1996). The first edition of this popular reference book on contemporary women mystery writers was nominated by the "Mystery Writers of America" for the Edgar Award for Best Critical-Biographical Work, and it won the Agatha and Macavity Awards for Best Non-Fiction. The second edition was nominated for both the Agatha and Anthony Awards
With Jan Grape, he is the co-editor of Deadly Women , another volume on women mystery writers, published by Carroll & Graf in 1997. Deadly Women was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work and won the Macavity Award for Best Non-Fiction from Mystery Readers International. In 1998, Berkley Prime Crime published Killer Books: A Reader's Guide to Exploring the Popular World of Mystery and Suspense , which he wrote with Jean Swanson. His first mystery short story, "The Village Vampire and the Oboe of Death," was published by Avon Books in September 1998 in the Malice Domestic 7 anthology; it was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Short Story. Other stories have appeared in Canine Crimes and A Canine Christmas, both published by Ballantine Books. Two new stories will be published in summer 2000, in the anthologies Magnolias and Mayhem (Silver Dagger Mysteries) and A Confederacy of Crime (NAL/Signet). His first novel for Silver Dagger is Cruel As The Grave.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An engaging mystery,
This review is from: Closer Than the Bones (Paperback)
In Tullahoma, Mississippi, retired sixty-year-old school teacher Ernestine "Ernie" Carpenter enjoys solving problems. Being single, Ernie, who works from her home, relishes helping people with their troubles. She has quickly earned a reputation for results.However, even Ernie is a bit taken aback when venerable wealthy icon Mary McElroy comes to Ernie's home for assistance. The elderly patron of Southern Belle Letters hires Ernie to uncover the identity of the individual who murdered writer Sukey Lytton six months ago in a reported accidental drowning. Since the same group will be at Mary's home, Ernie joins them on the pretense of helping Mary write her memoirs. Ernie quickly learns that Sukey's final manuscript is missing and wonders if that is the cause of the murder; that is if someone actually killed the author. Ernie also wonders if murder did indeed occur, and it is not the ramblings of a senior citizen, will the murderer strike again if the amateur sleuth gets too close to the truth? This Ernie Carpenter tale, CLOSER THAN BONES, is an engaging mystery starring a fabulous lead protagonist. The story line moves forward in a genteel way as expected from a Southern cozy, but never slows down or looks back. Ernie is a great character and the support cast, especially the writing group provides the audience with an insightful novel that readers will enjoy while demanding Dean James return quickly with his heroine. Harriet Klausner
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