But I Wouldn't Want to Die There (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 8) [Hardcover]

Nancy Pickard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1993

After the brutal murder of her friend Carol Margolis, Jenny Cain travels to New York, where she takes charge of Carol's job and the murder investigation. By the author of Bum Steer. 50,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo.

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the eighth Jenny Cain mystery, Anthony and Agatha Awards-winner Pickard ( I.O.U. ) takes the former charitable foundation director from her home and husband in Port Frederick, Mass., to her beloved Big Apple. Unfortunately, the trip is precipitated by the stabbing death of Jenny's friend Carol Margolis and a plea for help from the foundation Carol worked for that desperately needs an interim director. As assuredly depicted by Pickard, Jenny remains both canny and innocent while confronting such urban realities as a wildly diverse series of cab drivers, a theater company with a surprising approach to Shakespeare and her friend's nasty landlady. Jenny listens to Carol's parents who, in an eloquent passage of gently articulated grief, blame their daughter's death on her deadbeat musician husband. At the foundation, she deals with a couple of angry philanthropists, a woman who runs a halfway house for felons and a suave Frenchman with a direct and novel way of getting inner-city kids to read. All the well-placed clues are eventually drawn together, but not before Jenny has braved the subway, sampled her first Cambodian food and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge under her own steam. A pleasure from start to finish.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA-In her eighth series entry, Pickard sets Jenny down smack on West End Avenue in New York City. She's been asked to be interim director for the charitable Hart Foundation, a vacancy caused by the brutal murder of her best friend, Carol Margolis. The police assume that Carol was just the unlucky victim of a routine mugging gone wrong, but Jenny recalls Carol's cryptic last phone message and suspects that her murder was connected to her job. As the young woman digs through her friend's files and meets some of the zany characters who seem to thrive and prosper in the Big Apple, she realizes that many people had the means and motive to kill Carol, including her supposedly grief-stricken, estranged husband. A great balance of laughs and tears, thrills and chills, and a delight from start to finish.
Susan R. Farber, Chappaqua Public Library, NY
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Pr (December 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786200804
• ISBN-13: 978-0786200801
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,156,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smashing!, October 7, 2003

By 

Valerie Adolph "Coast Journal" (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: But I Wouldn't Want to Die There (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 8) (Hardcover)

It takes a really exceptional American writer to wean me away from my favourite English historical mysteries, but Nancy Pickard is such a smooth and accomplished writer that I can't resist her books. I just don't know what took me so long to find them.

It doesn't matter what aspect of mystery writing you consider, this writer can handle it flawlessly. She hooks in the reader effortlessly, her sense of place is awesome, and my pea brain doesn't get the characters muddled up, one with the other. The plot, the pacing, the motivation - it's all extremely well done.

In this story Jenny Cain moves to New York to fill in for her murdered friend Carol and there she finds a confused and confusing place, with characters to match. Her own personal battle - to stay there or return home to a quiet backwoods town - is the underlying counterpoint to the more immediate dangers she faces as she tries to discover how Carol met her death.

It's a book you won't want to put down.