Everyone agrees that Mason Blaine had a lot of enemies. But one of them hated the chairman of the university’s Spanish Department enough to kill him–and then stick a knife in his back. The Reverend Kathryn Koerney is no stranger to the sins of man, but this shocking example of overkill in small-town New Jersey has even her puzzled. Now, with Harton police chief Tom Holder, she finds herself hunting a killer through the cloistered world of academia–an unexpected hotbed of adultery, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. For Blaine’s murder is only the bait in a carefully disguised trap set for the real victim. And with their personal and professional lives on the line, Kathryn and Tom can only pray they aren’t looking the other way when death strikes again.
Familiar Friend (Divine Mystery)
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CRISTINA SUMNERS holds a M.Div from the General Seminary of the Episcopal Church and an M.Phil. in Medieval English Studies from Oxford University. She has worked in two churches in Texas and as the Education Officer at a large urban church in England. Married to a scientist, she lives in Taos, New Mexico.
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Chapter 1
The destruction of Tom Holder was carefully planned. Joel took months producing a suitable scheme.
He began with the principle that a man should be attacked at his weakest point. Studying Holder, his life, and his activities as best he could from a careful distance, Joel soon decided that Holder's weakest point must surely be Mrs. Holder. Louise.
The woman dressed like a bag lady. Mismatched articles of clothing hung off her dispiritedly, as if they knew they had no business being together. The hems of her skirts were amazingly uneven. Her blouses were so many decades out of date that they could not have been obtained anywhere but thrift shops. Sweaters and jackets were dragged inefficiently over these blouses so that sometimes the arms were fully into the sleeves and sometimes not. Frequently these ensembles were tied together with dreadful knitted scarves that seemed to be of the lady's own making.
It was obvious that her husband earned enough money as Harton's police chief to keep her in proper clothes; for one thing, they lived in a perfectly respectable house. Small, and nothing fancy, but a good, middle-class house, not a slum. And of course the man dressed decently himself. Joel concluded that Mrs. Holder must actually choose to dress the way she did, and therefore she must be seriously touched in the head.
It was necessary, therefore, to observe the wife, even strike acquaintance with the wife, without the husband knowing these overtures were being made, and since the husband was a policeman, some subtlety was called for. One of the first things that occurred to Joel was that he could not possibly stalk Mrs. Holder in his own car.
He had not yet decided whether he would, in the end, reveal himself to Holder as his tormentor or whether he would prefer to remain forever tantalizingly anonymous. If he wanted to leave the latter option open, it was important that Louise not be able to furnish any information that might lead to him. Therefore he could not follow her around, learning her schedule and habits, perhaps ultimately park in front of her house and pay a call, or strike acquaintance in order to work some scam on her, unless he abandoned his own conspicuous car for some more forgettable vehicle.
So it was that early on a crisp autumn morning Joel drove to Newark Airport, parked his red LeBaron convertible in long-term parking, and caught a shuttle bus to the car rental cluster. Guarding against the possibility that at some future point an attempt might be made to trace his movements all the way back to this relatively innocuous beginning, he timed his arrival well. He wanted to go unnoticed, lost in the early morning rush hour, and he hit it exactly on time. Every line at the Avis counter was three deep in drowsy travelers who had arrived on the various red-eye flights from the West Coast.
None of the lines appeared shorter than the others; wanting another criterion for choice, Joel glanced at the clerks behind the counter. He would choose the one least likely to pay any attention to him, the one most likely to be doing the job on autopilot.
Joel had been reared in reasonable affluence. As in most places in America, that meant he had been reared in mostly white neighborhoods, gone to mostly white schools and a mostly white college, and worked in mostly white workplaces. He was afflicted, therefore, with that almost universal American racism, that faint, unacknowledged, embarrassing, never-to-be-admitted assumption that black people are, on average, just a bit less bright than white people are. So he got in the line where the clerk behind the counter was a young black woman. In fairness to him, it should be said that his racism was exacerbated by his conservative taste in hair fashion; the front half of the girl's head was covered in golden cornrows and the back half was an explosion of orange frizz. And she was wearing purple dangling earrings that were at least five inches long, for heaven's sake, and shiny.
What Joel did not realize was that the earrings were shiny because they were made of titanium, which cost a pretty penny indeed, and Loreen Sanchez could afford them because she was not just one of the clerks at the Avis office at Newark Airport, she was the manager, and therefore drew a hefty salary. In fact, at twenty-two, Loreen was the youngest manager of a major airport Avis office in the country, and she had earned that position because she was as sharp as eight barrels of tacks. Joel had picked the wrong line.
"Good morning, sir! How can I help you?" Loreen beamed at Joel with her "red-eye smile," a nice combination of bracing friendliness and sympathy; she'd been working on it for years and it was very good. It made customers feel she understood how miserable they felt.
They went through the routine: he wanted a midsized sedan, no, he didn't have a reservation; he needed it for two weeks, yes, he'd be bringing it back to Newark, no, he didn't need insurance, he'd be insuring it with his regular insurers in Harton.
All the while these uninspiring transactions were going on, Loreen Sanchez's mind was ticking fast. It was perfectly clear to her that this customer had not been on a plane all night. He had none of the signs, and if anybody knew the signs, Loreen did. People didn't get off the red-eye with trembling hands and eyes ever so slightly wide with excitement. This guy was wired, and it wasn't because he'd been drinking coffee all night. This wasn't caffeine; she knew caffeine. This was something else. And it was something wrong.
He lived in Harton; that was about an hour and a half drive from the airport; obviously he owned a car, because he had a car insurer in Harton. If he needed a spare because his own was in the shop, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to rent one in Harton. He'd driven, or taken a taxi, all the way to Newark to rent a car other than his own. That seemed to indicate some need for secrecy. It could be something as relatively innocent as an affair, which would have been none of Avis's business. But if the guy was going to rent an Avis car and do something illegal with it, it could turn out to be very much their business. Not that they could be held accountable, strictly speaking, but still . . .
Risking the customer's impatience, Loreen gave him a huge smile, begged his pardon, gathered up his papers, and said she'd be back in a moment. Retreating to the office where she couldn't be seen, she made a photocopy of his driver's license and insurance card and then wrote a few terse sentences on the photocopied sheet, a practice she invariably followed when a customer made the hair move on the back of her neck. She then put the piece of paper in a special file.
She returned to the counter with yet another smile, the customer's license and insurance card, Avis's rental papers, and a set of car keys, and handed them over.
The customer took these items from her with an urgent haste that only served to exacerbate her misgivings. He managed, barely, to throw her a breathless "thanks" over his shoulder as he stalked hastily away.
Out in the parking lot, Joel felt as though he'd escaped from something, but he wasn't sure what. The way that black girl had looked at him! As if she suspected him of something! But that was stupid, she couldn't have known anything, he was just renting a car. He gulped in huge lungfuls of the cold, welcome air, and strode along the rows of identical trunks until a number painted on the asphalt told him he had arrived at the beginning of his vengeance.
Chapter 2
It was one of those magic nights that October frequently produces in New Jersey. The leaves made speckled golden haloes around the streetlights, and the air was sharp and restless. Mason Blaine marched briskly down the sidewalk that ran along the shadowy street where he lived. He congratulated himself on his habit of walking to and from the campus as long as the weather was good. Some of those lazy young fools on the faculty drove everywhere. Stupid of them. They'd only get fat and unfit. And they missed the pleasure of being alone on a night like this, walking along, crunching the first fallen leaves underfoot, enjoying the rustling dark. It was nights like this that Halloweens were made of. A witchy night. That little breeze, stirring the leaves. Nights like this, you could see why people used to believe in elves. All those movements in the shadows, if you were the fanciful type– Out of the corner of his eye Blaine caught a movement that did not seem to fit into that kind of fancy. He turned to see what it was, but too late.
An annihilating blow struck the back of his head; he actually heard the crunch as his skull buckled like a broken egg, but thanks to the effect of shock, and the fact that he was unconscious if not dead by the time he hit the ground, he felt no pain.
The figure holding the crowbar stood for a moment hoping a wild heartbeat would subside. Deep breathing was supposed to help. Everybody said deep breathing helped. But it was taking too much time, and there was no time to waste. Quick: to the car parked at the curb. Open the trunk. Put the crowbar back in. Close the trunk. Drag the body onto the floor of the backseat. Close the door gently. Get in the car. Drive away discreetly. It was a quiet neighborhood. Keep it quiet.
An intermittent breeze bestirred the leaves to confidential whispers among themselves, and beyond the reach of the streetlights the shadows were alive with the movements that had reminded Mason Blaine of elves.
It was lost on Tracy. She was walking home from her session with Father Edwards, and her brain was too heavy with trouble to notice the mischievous air. Everything was awful. It was so bad, she could hardly believe it. She wondered how long she could endure it. And when she couldn't endure it any longer, what then? Divorce was no more a viable option than murder. You couldn't break a promise you made to God. Or before God. But wasn't every promis...
The destruction of Tom Holder was carefully planned. Joel took months producing a suitable scheme.
He began with the principle that a man should be attacked at his weakest point. Studying Holder, his life, and his activities as best he could from a careful distance, Joel soon decided that Holder's weakest point must surely be Mrs. Holder. Louise.
The woman dressed like a bag lady. Mismatched articles of clothing hung off her dispiritedly, as if they knew they had no business being together. The hems of her skirts were amazingly uneven. Her blouses were so many decades out of date that they could not have been obtained anywhere but thrift shops. Sweaters and jackets were dragged inefficiently over these blouses so that sometimes the arms were fully into the sleeves and sometimes not. Frequently these ensembles were tied together with dreadful knitted scarves that seemed to be of the lady's own making.
It was obvious that her husband earned enough money as Harton's police chief to keep her in proper clothes; for one thing, they lived in a perfectly respectable house. Small, and nothing fancy, but a good, middle-class house, not a slum. And of course the man dressed decently himself. Joel concluded that Mrs. Holder must actually choose to dress the way she did, and therefore she must be seriously touched in the head.
It was necessary, therefore, to observe the wife, even strike acquaintance with the wife, without the husband knowing these overtures were being made, and since the husband was a policeman, some subtlety was called for. One of the first things that occurred to Joel was that he could not possibly stalk Mrs. Holder in his own car.
He had not yet decided whether he would, in the end, reveal himself to Holder as his tormentor or whether he would prefer to remain forever tantalizingly anonymous. If he wanted to leave the latter option open, it was important that Louise not be able to furnish any information that might lead to him. Therefore he could not follow her around, learning her schedule and habits, perhaps ultimately park in front of her house and pay a call, or strike acquaintance in order to work some scam on her, unless he abandoned his own conspicuous car for some more forgettable vehicle.
So it was that early on a crisp autumn morning Joel drove to Newark Airport, parked his red LeBaron convertible in long-term parking, and caught a shuttle bus to the car rental cluster. Guarding against the possibility that at some future point an attempt might be made to trace his movements all the way back to this relatively innocuous beginning, he timed his arrival well. He wanted to go unnoticed, lost in the early morning rush hour, and he hit it exactly on time. Every line at the Avis counter was three deep in drowsy travelers who had arrived on the various red-eye flights from the West Coast.
None of the lines appeared shorter than the others; wanting another criterion for choice, Joel glanced at the clerks behind the counter. He would choose the one least likely to pay any attention to him, the one most likely to be doing the job on autopilot.
Joel had been reared in reasonable affluence. As in most places in America, that meant he had been reared in mostly white neighborhoods, gone to mostly white schools and a mostly white college, and worked in mostly white workplaces. He was afflicted, therefore, with that almost universal American racism, that faint, unacknowledged, embarrassing, never-to-be-admitted assumption that black people are, on average, just a bit less bright than white people are. So he got in the line where the clerk behind the counter was a young black woman. In fairness to him, it should be said that his racism was exacerbated by his conservative taste in hair fashion; the front half of the girl's head was covered in golden cornrows and the back half was an explosion of orange frizz. And she was wearing purple dangling earrings that were at least five inches long, for heaven's sake, and shiny.
What Joel did not realize was that the earrings were shiny because they were made of titanium, which cost a pretty penny indeed, and Loreen Sanchez could afford them because she was not just one of the clerks at the Avis office at Newark Airport, she was the manager, and therefore drew a hefty salary. In fact, at twenty-two, Loreen was the youngest manager of a major airport Avis office in the country, and she had earned that position because she was as sharp as eight barrels of tacks. Joel had picked the wrong line.
"Good morning, sir! How can I help you?" Loreen beamed at Joel with her "red-eye smile," a nice combination of bracing friendliness and sympathy; she'd been working on it for years and it was very good. It made customers feel she understood how miserable they felt.
They went through the routine: he wanted a midsized sedan, no, he didn't have a reservation; he needed it for two weeks, yes, he'd be bringing it back to Newark, no, he didn't need insurance, he'd be insuring it with his regular insurers in Harton.
All the while these uninspiring transactions were going on, Loreen Sanchez's mind was ticking fast. It was perfectly clear to her that this customer had not been on a plane all night. He had none of the signs, and if anybody knew the signs, Loreen did. People didn't get off the red-eye with trembling hands and eyes ever so slightly wide with excitement. This guy was wired, and it wasn't because he'd been drinking coffee all night. This wasn't caffeine; she knew caffeine. This was something else. And it was something wrong.
He lived in Harton; that was about an hour and a half drive from the airport; obviously he owned a car, because he had a car insurer in Harton. If he needed a spare because his own was in the shop, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to rent one in Harton. He'd driven, or taken a taxi, all the way to Newark to rent a car other than his own. That seemed to indicate some need for secrecy. It could be something as relatively innocent as an affair, which would have been none of Avis's business. But if the guy was going to rent an Avis car and do something illegal with it, it could turn out to be very much their business. Not that they could be held accountable, strictly speaking, but still . . .
Risking the customer's impatience, Loreen gave him a huge smile, begged his pardon, gathered up his papers, and said she'd be back in a moment. Retreating to the office where she couldn't be seen, she made a photocopy of his driver's license and insurance card and then wrote a few terse sentences on the photocopied sheet, a practice she invariably followed when a customer made the hair move on the back of her neck. She then put the piece of paper in a special file.
She returned to the counter with yet another smile, the customer's license and insurance card, Avis's rental papers, and a set of car keys, and handed them over.
The customer took these items from her with an urgent haste that only served to exacerbate her misgivings. He managed, barely, to throw her a breathless "thanks" over his shoulder as he stalked hastily away.
Out in the parking lot, Joel felt as though he'd escaped from something, but he wasn't sure what. The way that black girl had looked at him! As if she suspected him of something! But that was stupid, she couldn't have known anything, he was just renting a car. He gulped in huge lungfuls of the cold, welcome air, and strode along the rows of identical trunks until a number painted on the asphalt told him he had arrived at the beginning of his vengeance.
Chapter 2
It was one of those magic nights that October frequently produces in New Jersey. The leaves made speckled golden haloes around the streetlights, and the air was sharp and restless. Mason Blaine marched briskly down the sidewalk that ran along the shadowy street where he lived. He congratulated himself on his habit of walking to and from the campus as long as the weather was good. Some of those lazy young fools on the faculty drove everywhere. Stupid of them. They'd only get fat and unfit. And they missed the pleasure of being alone on a night like this, walking along, crunching the first fallen leaves underfoot, enjoying the rustling dark. It was nights like this that Halloweens were made of. A witchy night. That little breeze, stirring the leaves. Nights like this, you could see why people used to believe in elves. All those movements in the shadows, if you were the fanciful type– Out of the corner of his eye Blaine caught a movement that did not seem to fit into that kind of fancy. He turned to see what it was, but too late.
An annihilating blow struck the back of his head; he actually heard the crunch as his skull buckled like a broken egg, but thanks to the effect of shock, and the fact that he was unconscious if not dead by the time he hit the ground, he felt no pain.
The figure holding the crowbar stood for a moment hoping a wild heartbeat would subside. Deep breathing was supposed to help. Everybody said deep breathing helped. But it was taking too much time, and there was no time to waste. Quick: to the car parked at the curb. Open the trunk. Put the crowbar back in. Close the trunk. Drag the body onto the floor of the backseat. Close the door gently. Get in the car. Drive away discreetly. It was a quiet neighborhood. Keep it quiet.
An intermittent breeze bestirred the leaves to confidential whispers among themselves, and beyond the reach of the streetlights the shadows were alive with the movements that had reminded Mason Blaine of elves.
It was lost on Tracy. She was walking home from her session with Father Edwards, and her brain was too heavy with trouble to notice the mischievous air. Everything was awful. It was so bad, she could hardly believe it. She wondered how long she could endure it. And when she couldn't endure it any longer, what then? Divorce was no more a viable option than murder. You couldn't break a promise you made to God. Or before God. But wasn't every promis...
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another entertaining Kathryn/Tom "Divine Mystery",
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Familiar Friend (Mass Market Paperback)
"Familiar Friend" takes us back to Harton, USA, after a hop across the pond to England in the previous novel. I'm glad to be back in the town Cristina Sumners based on Princeton, N.J. Wealthy and highly educated Episcopalian priest Kathryn Koerney and Police Chief Tom Holder, a working-class flatfoot rich in spirit and smart as a whip when it comes to criminal investigations, are more in their element in this academic hothouse than in an aristocratic ancestral home, to my mind.
The first in this series, "Crooked Heart," was a splendid web of plotting and characterization. This third installment follows a slightly different structure: unlike books one and two, it contains no unnamed actors but still very effectively weaves a plot not easily untangled...although I did spot one perpetrator and the means of the crime without a lot of strain. As is the case in many a mystery novel, Sumners crowds a bunch of what end up being peripheral stand-ups into the book to inflate the suspect list, but in "Familiar Friend" I found it a trifle annoying that several of the couples introduced early on just evaporated later. They had potential. The evolving relationship of Kathryn and Tom moves forward pleasingly in this book, and Tom's rival for Kathryn's heart does enter the picture in the later pages of "Familiar Friend" which was a relief to me since I kept wondering if he'd been forgotten. Sumners writes in her Acknowledgements that she actually began this novel in the 1970s and then crafted it into this third published work. Presumably, this explains why on page 114, there is a reference to a character's office being in the World Trade Center. I guess either editing didn't catch that, or are we supposed to assume this story took place before 2001? It's a mystery. I hope a fourth Kathryn/Tom novel will be forthcoming!
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Familiar Friend makes Dean's List,
By
This review is from: Familiar Friend (Mass Market Paperback)
A charming mixture of clerical sleuth and academic university setting, Koerney's latest is a delicious summer treat! You can feel the ivy in the richness of FAMILIAR FRIEND's Ivy League setting as Koerney's flowing prose whisks you along, darting in and out amongst characters, and character types, you may well remember from the alma mater....If you have a taste for traditional mysteries a la Sayers, Christie or, in a more modern setting, Spencer-Fleming or McInerny, mix yourself a cool gin and tonic and pick up this terrific whodunit!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good story-telling, but a bit too Harlequin Romance for my taste.,
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This review is from: Familiar Friend (Mass Market Paperback)
And besides, didn't Spencer-Fleming do the female Episcopal priest-older married police chief love thing already? Sumners makes the priest wealthy and the setting is Princeton, NJ, instead of upstate NY, but it still seems not very original.
I read this book in a day -- it's definitely a page turner. There are two plots going on, one of which is planted in the first chapter before going on to the finding of a body in the second chapter. Most of the book focuses on the body story-line. Personally, I think the other plot line should have been dropped, as it was never sufficiently developed anyway. The main characters are the Episcopal priest (who is wealthy and her boyfriend is an English noble) and the police chief, who is unhappily married. The priest is credibly involved in the case because the body was left on the grounds of the church and a parishioner found it. The list of suspects are primarily in a department of the university (clearly Princeton, although given another name), and the husband of the priest's-good-friend-who-finds-the-body is a student in that department. It's an intriguing situation for a cozy mystery -- limited number of suspects to pick from. However -- the killer was quickly on my short list of suspects and never left it, so I was not surprised at the outcome. Aside from the problems with a borrowed situation and extraneous plot, I thought that the priest having an English marquis in love with her (and she with him) and her having all that money and the police chief pining for her was all just a bit too much unrealistic Harlequin romance for my taste. All we needed was a scene with them cuddled up by a fire together, while it snowed outside and the cookies baked in the oven. I did appreciate that Sumners got the details right about the church and the university -- the author clearly knows and understands her setting.
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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tom holder, vestry members, crime scene team Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mason Blaine, Father Mark, District Attorney, Jamie Newman, Valerie Powers, Nick Silverman, Sergeant Pursley, Tracy Newman, Cletus Hall, Sid Garvey, Chief Holder, Edward Drew, Crystal Montoya, Ellen Caldwell, Newark Airport, Spanish Department, Link Massey, Carlos Barreda, Tildy Harmon, Loreen Sanchez, Charles Caldwell, Patterson Road, Miss Powers, Student Center, Stephen Stanworth Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
tom holder, vestry members, crime scene team Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mason Blaine, Father Mark, District Attorney, Jamie Newman, Valerie Powers, Nick Silverman, Sergeant Pursley, Tracy Newman, Cletus Hall, Sid Garvey, Chief Holder, Edward Drew, Crystal Montoya, Ellen Caldwell, Newark Airport, Spanish Department, Link Massey, Carlos Barreda, Tildy Harmon, Loreen Sanchez, Charles Caldwell, Patterson Road, Miss Powers, Student Center, Stephen Stanworth Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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