Death by Thunder (Martha Patterson Mysteries) [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Gretchen Sprague (Author)

Book Description

Series: Martha Patterson Mysteries | Publication Date: October 13, 2005

After several years on the West Coast, photographer Janet Upton is home, relieved to be newly unmarried and with her family in the mountains of her Hudson River hometown.

In spite of a vicious thunder storm---and also because of it---Janet and her camera are on a mountainside trying for dramatic photographs when she hears a cry and sees a body flying down from the rocks above her. She hurries to the bottom to find citizens and emergency personnel with the body of Broderick Hale (Janet's uncle by marriage).
Phillips Landing is a town where everyone knows everything about everyone else
---almost. Broderick Hale was a man who spoke his mind, had strong opinions, and lots of money. No one seems to see the event as anything but an unfortunate accident, just as no one did eight years earlier when a wealthy woman building her "dream" home fell from that same mountain. When Janet's film from this stormy day is destroyed, however, she has to wonder, Did Broderick fall, or was he pushed?

In this stand-alone tale of intrigue, Gretchen Sprague has captured the dangerous beauty of her beloved Hudson Highlands. Death by Thunder boasts the strong characters and solid stories that have characterized all her Martha Patterson mysteries.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the first of what was to be a new cozy series from Sprague (Maquette for Murder), who died shortly after completing the book, Janet Upton, a recent divorcée who has returned to her upstate New York hometown to run an art gallery, is shocked by the death of her uncle Bud, in part because she witnesses his fatal fall from a rocky crag. She's even more surprised to discover that her late, abrasive uncle willed to her a plot of land subject to a sales agreement from which she stands to benefit richly. Uncle Bud's "accidental" death echoes that of another landowner eight years earlier, a woman whose death prompted an investigation of Janet's more beloved uncle Paul. Janet is gradually pulled into a mystery that centers on the property she's inherited, for which she feels a responsibility as its steward. Her ecologically principled curiosity places her in ever-growing danger, while the determined killer, perhaps an obvious suspect to the reader, eludes her amateur sleuthing until the moment of confrontation. An unlikely murder scheme (collapsing a bridge to kill someone?) lends interest to a predictable plot. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Gretchen Sprague was a legal services lawyer in Brooklyn, New York, for eleven years. She retired to the Hudson Highlands to write the Martha Patterson mysteries. Sprague died in 2003, making Death by Thunder this gifted storyteller's last mystery.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (October 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312347677
• ASIN: B000VYPAAA
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,984,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death Repeats Itself, January 1, 2006

By 

Maggie Mae (Reno, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death by Thunder (Martha Patterson Mysteries) (Hardcover)

After Photographer Janet Upton comes home to New York's Hudson Highlands she sees a man fall from a cliff to his death. She gets photos as she happened to be out on a photo shoot, but the pictures don't come out. And it turns out the man who fell happens to be her uncle by marriage and it just so happens that eight years earlier a woman named Alta Ferguson also fell from the same spot. She had been about to build on the spot and another uncle had been investigated concerning her death. Now Janet wonders could these deaths somehow be related.

Somebody apparently doesn't want any building done on this land. And now Alta Ferguson's son shows up and wants to build a house there. And it seems that again, people are going to die to keep a secret or secrets buried. Will one of them be Janet, well of course not, but she gets into some serious trouble.

There are plenty of suspects in this fine mystery that was to have been the first in a series, but sadly Ms. Sprague died after the book was finished, so now this story is a stand alone, but it stands very well indeed. Five stars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fine regional cozy, October 25, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death by Thunder (Martha Patterson Mysteries) (Hardcover)

In 1987 in Phillips Landing in upstate New York, Paul and Marion Willard get a court injunction to temporarily stop Alta Ferguson from building a swimming pool on her property. Not long afterward Sheriff Investigator Noel Riesbach interrogates the Willards as to where they have been since Alta apparently fell off the side of a cliff at the spot where she was building the pool.

In 1995 during a downpour, photographer Janet Upton hears a scream and reports that to the police. The local cops investigate and find the body of Janet's Uncle Broderick Hale dead at the same spot where Alta fell. Feeling there is a link besides the connection to her, as she is also related to Marion and Paul, Janet begins to make inquiries into two deaths.

This is a terrific amateur sleuth tale with police procedural ties. Janet needs to know who killed her Uncle though she assumes the motive has to do with his vote as a local councilor on the Steep Slopes Law land use. Interestingly besides the ties through her relatives to the 1987 death, Janet begins to see another connection involving land use that brings her much closer to the killer of her uncle than she ought to be as a second murder is okay in the mind of the culprit. DEATH BY THE THUNDER is a fine regional cozy.

Harriet Klausner