Good and Dead (Homer Kelly Mystery) [Paperback]

Jane Langton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1989 | Series: Homer Kelly Mystery

Homer Kelly is back...a distinguished Thoreau scholar and professor of American literature, also an ex-detective for Middlesex County. But for now he's camped out at a small New England church, trying to figure out why so many parishioners are ending up dead so soon.

Homer's job is to untangle murders from natural death. He finds the flock, so devout on Sundays, capable of breaking most commandments the other six days.

"Keeps you on edge from start to finish." (Publisher's Source)

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This agreeably malevolent book has a goodly number of its scenes set in the Old West Church of Nashoba, where far too many of the seemingly virtuous and righteous villagers have murder on their minds. The interplay of the pious teachings from the pulpit and the ensuing mayhem is deftly handled, as the good men and women of the small New England town are shattered by one bewildering death after another: 12 in one year. Homer Kelly, a retired lieutenant detective, quickly zeros in on one blatant malefactor, but the other deaths are more puzzling. Did Betsy Bucky deliberately goad her husband into a heart attack by feeding him lavish doses of cholesterol? What about the supposed rash of heart failures among many of those grievously illis someone easing them into a quick death? Langton (Emily Dickinson is Dead, who shows a deep love of New England and its history, has peopled her fictional village with a memorable gallery of sunny, sensible parishioners who, far from being models of rectitude, try gamely to cope with their lust, greed and jealousy. A novel that's slow to start comes to a spirited conclusion when we find that a harsh and inevitable justice is meted out to those who flout the laws of God or man. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

8 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140126872
• ISBN-13: 978-0140126877
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,052,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've written an awful lot of books. There are eleven for middle-aged children, mostly fantasies. The ones that have hung around the longest are "The Diamond in the Window" and "The Fledgling." The seventh in the series called "The Hall Family Chronicles" came out last spring, "The Mysterious Circus," and I've just finished writing an eighth, "The Dragon Tree."

All eighteen mysteries for adults have the same protagonists, Homer and Mary Kelly. Mary is the sensible one, but I confess I like Homer's rhapsodic flights of fancy. Most of their adventures happen in Massachusetts, but I've also sent them to farflung places I wanted to visit myself, like Florence, Oxford and Venice. Most of the novels are illustrated with my own drawings, but "The Escher Twist" has ten prints by the mysterious Dutch artist M. C. Escher, and the two historical mysteries are illustrated with nineteenth-century photographs.