Death in the Off-Season: A Merry Folger Mystery [Hardcover]

Francine Mathews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

When Rusty Mason, a man fleeing the law and family discourse, is drowned in his brother's Nantucket cranberry bog, rookie detective Meredith Folger must decide if the case is one of mistaken identity. A first novel. 15,000 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Spunky but inexperienced, third-generation Nantucket cop Meredith Folger investigates murder in this spare, atmospheric debut. Wealthy farmer Peter Mason is shocked to learn of his estranged brother's return to the island. Rusty, who'd fled to Brazil after a fight with their father and an insider trading scandal, shows up infected with the HIV virus, apparently addicted to cocaine-and then dead, hit by a car and left on Mason property face-down in shallow water to drown. Peter is the suspect of choice for Merry, who has to battle her father, the police chief, for the assignment. Mathews is especially adept at evoking the somber isolation of the islanders as the tourist season draws to a close. Merry and Peter seem two love-crossed souls (Merry's former lover now works as Peter's assistant), but Mathews doesn't clarify their relationship. Other suspects include a local teenager, a free-spirited couple and a lonely schoolteacher, but all are indifferently depicted in a story that unfolds haphazardly and sports a flurry of new revelations near the end. Of the place, people and plot, only the first comes fully alive here.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Labor Day weekend on Nantucket Island can be murder. Just ask Detective Meredith Folger, who wants to know why somebody would've killed newly returned Rusty Mason--who took off for Brazil ten years ago one jump ahead of a sealed indictment--and why he would've risked his freedom to come back in the first place. The deeper she digs, though, the more dirt she finds. The resourceful Rusty was blackmailing his kid brother Peter, off-islanders Schuyler Tate-Jackson (Peter's lawyer) and Mayling Stern (Sky's dress-designer girlfriend), and whoever else was implicated in his own mysterious crime back in 1982, just before his father narrowly survived a takeover bid for the family business and then succumbed to a fatal heart attack. And since Merry has problems with her own family business--she's a third-generation cop whose father, the island's chief of police, doesn't want her to handle the case--she can understand how family passions might have boiled over, even before she knows exactly which passions they are. Less purely evocative and more sturdily constructed than other recent regional mysteries--Philip Craig's Off Season (p. 590) and John Smolen's Angel's Head (p. 593)--this is a well-crafted, workmanlike debut. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688134432
• ISBN-13: 978-0688134433
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,636,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Francine Mathews, who also writes as Stephanie Barron, is the author of twenty novels of mystery, history, and suspense. A graduate of Princeton and Stanford, she spent four years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, and presently lives and works in Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Beginning, April 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Death in the Off-Season: A Merry Folger Mystery (Hardcover)

As a first in the Merry Folger series, this book provided all the great elements of a classic mystery: developed characters, suspense & a puzzle to gnaw your teeth on. The death of Peter Mason's brother draws detective Merry Folger into a relationship with the bog owner, providing a touch of romance woven into the web of mystery. The characters are so well written, without being sentimental, that by the end of the book, you feel they live next door - you want to know what happens next in their lives. The mystery itself rates with the best of them, and the setting of Nantucket is so well written, you'll want to be on the next ferry - but not without someone watching your back!