Classified As Murder, by Miranda James
This book once again follows Charlie and Diesel, but a new character is added to the mix! Charlie's son, Sean, comes home unexpectedly from Texas, and Charlie can't figure out why and Sean's not making any noise to fill in the gaps. Meanwhile, at the public library where Charlie volunteers, elderly and wealthy Mr. Delacorte comes in and asks Charlie to do inventory on his extensive rare book collection, since he thinks someone is stealing some of the books from him. Charlie agrees since he works regularly with rare books and because he likes Mr. Delacorte. Charlie heads over to the Delacorte mansion at Mr. Delacorte's request to meet the rest of the family. Everyone is absolutely insane in one way or another. After Charlie meets the family and the butler, Truesdale, he sets to work. He and Diesel head home for lunch on the first day of work and return to find Mr. Delacorte dead at his desk in the library. The police squad is called in, and Kanesha Berry comes back into the picture to help Charlie once again. Once the investigation has started, the Will is read to the family. Everyone gets some slice of Mr. Delacorte's money, but Truesdale gets the entire estate because Mr. Delacorte was hiding in the closet and had it for Truesdale, but the butler is straight as a ruler. The reading of the Will gives everyone some motive for the murder of Mr. Truesdale. Charlie, Diesel and Kanesha set to work to solve the mystery.
Warning: Spoilers follow here.
Sean is home because he began having an affair with his boss at work, only to find out she does this with lots of men in the firm, and being jaded he quits his job and comes home to Charlie's house. He decides he doesn't want to be a corporate lawyer anymore, and wants to take the Miss. bar to become a lawyer in town.
As is usual with these sorts of mysteries, the butler did it. Turns out there is a lot of back-stabbing, lots of getting around, and lots of motive. The nephew, Hubert, and his mistress, Anita, who works with Charlie at the public library, originally stole books from the collection, which made Mr. Delacorte suspicious to begin with. Hubert's wife, Eloise, and their uncle, Mr. Delacorte, are both deathly allergic to peanuts, and cookies with peanuts in them are discovered to be the culprit for both of their deaths. Truesdale planted the cookies for both victims. Anita's niece works with Alexandra Pendergrast, the daughter Mr. Delacorte's lawyer. When Mr. Delacorte suddenly changed his Will the week before he died, Anita's niece found out, and gabbed it to her aunt. Anita told Truesdale, and once he found out he was getting everything, he killed Mr. Delacorte before he could change it again. Eloise, through mumbled ramblings, tried to tell everyone the truth, but Truesdale killed her off before she could coherently tell anyone. Cousing Stewart, after learning that Mr. Delacorte's death was murder and not a heart attack, doesn't want to live in the mansion anymore out of fear, and becomes a boarder in Charlie's house. Counsin Cynthia, who is innocent all throughout the book, grabbed a cookie on the way to work the night Truesdale poisoned and killed Eloise. She takes the cookie to the police, and the police use it as evidence to convict Truesdale, but he is only convicted of Eloise's murder. All the main characters come together for dinner and the book ends.
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I enjoyed this book, but not nearly as much as the first one. Things were not wrapped up as nicely at the end as they were in Murder Past Due. The nice thing about this series, at least what I can tell so far, is that you don't have to read every book in the series to know what's going on. It's like Nancy Drew mysteries and the like; each book is simply a new story, and you are reacquainted with the main character each book, so there is no back story knowledge required from one book to the next. There is a lot left up in the air at the end of this book, however, and I worry that since each book doesn't recap the last story, that we just simply aren't going to know the outcome and have to live with the assumptions at the end of the book. It's because of the absent ending that I give it a 4/5. It was a solid story with good motive and flow, but not as good an ending as the first one.
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For Next Time
The Green Mile, by Stephen King
Set in the 1930s at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary's death-row facility, The Green Mile is the riveting and tragic story of John Coffey, a giant, preternaturally gentle inmate condemned to death for the rape and murder of twin nine-year-old girls. It is a story narrated years later by Paul Edgecomb, the ward superintendent compelled to help every prisoner spend his last days peacefully and every man walk the green mile to execution with his humanity intact.
Edgecomb has sent seventy-eight inmates to their date with "old sparky," but he's never encountered one like Coffey -- a man who wants to die, yet has the power to heal. And in this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecomb discovers the terrible truth about Coffey's gift, a truth that challenges his most cherished beliefs -- and ours.
Originally published in 1996 in six self-contained monthly installments, The Green Mile is an astonishingly rich and complex novel that delivers over and over again.
-barnesandnoble.com
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