Death of the Party (Death on Demand Series #16)

Publishers Weekly

That comfy crime-solving couple, bookstore owner Annie Darling and her devoted husband, Max, investigate the murder of media magnate Jeremiah Addison in Hart's feel-good 16th Death on Demand mystery (after 2004's Murder Walks the Plank). Addison apparently fell by accident down the marble staircase inside his mansion on his private South Carolina island, Golden Silk, but his sister-in-law, Britt Barlow, knows better, because immediately afterward she removed the trip wire she found strung at the head of the stairs. Britt had her reasons for not informing the police, but now, some six months later, she wants Max, who runs Confidential Commissions, to attend a reunion of the people present on Golden Silk at the time of the murder in order to unmask the killer. Hart provides plenty of suspects including troubled sons and their wives, a sexy reporter, a pompous politician and her husband then plants intriguing clues, another murder and just enough red herrings to keep readers guessing until the denouement. Those looking for a change of pace from more street-smart crime fiction will enjoy this cozy whodunit in the Agatha Christie tradition. Agent, Deborah Schneider. 8-city author tour. (On sale Mar. 29) FYI: Hart has won multiple Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In Hart's latest Agatha Christie homage, Max and Annie Darling join a party on an isolated private island to help pick a killer from ten suspects. A year after Jeremiah Addison, her brother-in-law, fell to his death in Heron House on South Carolina's Gold Silk Island, Britt Barlow has inherited house and island when her sister Cissy followed Jeremiah to the grave. Now somebody claims to have seen Britt, reluctant to give ailing Cissy further grief, secretly remove the wire that tripped Jeremiah from across the top of the staircase. Britt tells Max she's afraid of being blackmailed or even murdered herself, and she wants the owner/operator of Confidential Commissions to attend a gathering of the ten people who were on the island at the time of Jeremiah's fatal tumble. Max and Annie (Engaged to Die, 2003, etc.) disguise themselves as oral historians collecting information for a life of Jeremiah, but they're swiftly unmasked-the one realistic stroke in this pipe dream of a retro whodunit-and have to work with the suspects, once their communications are cut off, to protect themselves from the killer. Setting, characters and motives have been sitting on the shelves perhaps a mite too long, and the Darlings' main detective strategies are to make endless lists quaintly reminiscent of Philo Vance and get their gun stolen. Nothing you couldn't give your gran. Others may find themselves checking their watches as the innocent cower in terror. Author tour