| |
First Lines to Die For
May Mystery Trivia
Answers
1. "The first time I laid eyes on Terry
Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith
outside the terrace of The Dancers."
d) THE LONG GOODBYE, Raymond Chandler
2. "Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v
under the more flexible v of his mouth."
e) THE MALTESE FALCON, Dashiell Hammett
3. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again."
a) REBECCA, Daphne du Maurier
4. "I should feel sorrier," Raymond Horgan says.
f) PRESUMED INNOCENT, Scott Turow
5. "All nights should be so dark, all winters so warm, all
headlights so dazzling."
b) GORKY PARK, Martin Cruz Smith
6. "One never knows when the blow may fall."
c) THE THIRD MAN, Graham Greene
|
|
| |
Dear Mystery Fans,
Welcome to the Mystery eNewsletter from Hachette Book Group
USA.
Pick up one of our latest mystery novels to take to the
beach on a hot summer day, read a letter from
Margaret Maron, and see if you can guess who wrote the
first lines to your favorite mysteries with a little trivia
quiz.
Enjoy!
|
|
| |
DEATH'S HALF ACRE
by
Margaret Maron
The murder of a controversial high-profile woman
commissioner pulls Deborah and her husband, Sheriff's
Deputy Dwight Bryant, into the shadows of the past,
where even the most prominent townsfolk—including the
honorable judge herself—have something to hide. Intent
on protecting those who love her most, Deborah must
balance her own concerns with her commitment to justice,
and the knowledge that a vicious killer is still on the
loose.
Also Available As An eBook |
 |
|
| |
|
CLOSE
by
Martina Cole
The #1 bestselling novelist in the UK now makes her U.S.
debut with a hard-hitting story that combines the brutality
and deep family ties of The Sopranos with an
unparalleled look at the underbelly of London's gang land.
Patrick Brodie is a risk-taker like his alcoholic father.
Before long, Brodie has ruthlessly taken out the old guard
of the criminal underworld. Brodie has no foolish dreams of
marriage, until he meets Lily Diamond. Eventually they
settle down and have a family, and grow determined that
their children will not have to face the same kind of lives
they did. But then, the unthinkable happens, and everything
is suddenly, irreversibly changed.
Also Available As A Hachette Audio
Interview with Martina Cole |
|
| |
A LETTER FROM MARGARET MARON |
|
| |
Town comes to country in
Death's Half Acre, the fourteenth novel about North
Carolina District Court Judge Deborah Knott.
Dear Readers:
Things keep changing in Colleton County, North Carolina, my
fictional piece of the state. Once nicely removed from the
universities/high tech developers/pharmaceutical labs of the
Research Triangle (Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham), those
centers have drawn so many workers from all over the country
that beautiful, fertile farms are being drawn and quartered
by orange surveyors' ribbons into half-acre lots in treeless
developments to house those workers. Naturally, those
thousands of new residents want their "country living" to
come with town amenities: organic grocery stores, spas and
gyms, pizza palaces, restaurants, etc., etc.
With very little regulation from Colleton's county
commissioners, greedy developers act as if they've been
given the keys to the candy store, while long-time residents
and farmers, who would rather grow sweet potatoes and cotton
than houses, find their way of living under siege. Hog
farmers know their lagoons stink, but they were there years
before a hundred houses went up next door, and they have no
control over which way the wind blows. Folks who have always
kept a few chickens for fresh, hormone-free eggs suddenly
find manicured lawns next to their henhouses, and the new
people complain about roosters that crow at sunrise, even on
the weekends. Soy bean farmers go out to check their fields
and find the ground gouged and the plants mangled by
suburban kids on four-wheelers who have no land of their own
on which to ride and no concept of the damage they are doing
to someone's cash crops.
These are some of the real clashes that wind up in
Judge Deborah Knott's fictional court in
Death's Half Acre. What will not wind up in her
court is the person who killed one of the county
commissioners. Candace Bradshaw loved being chairman of the
board—loved the power almost more than she loved the money
certain developers were slipping her on the side for
favorable rulings—but when her own greed threatened
another's, she was killed in a clumsy attempt to make her
death look like suicide.
As Deborah tries to balance her roles of judge, wife,
stepmother, and sister to eleven older brothers, she finds
herself drawn into whatever mischief her scapegrace,
ex-bootlegging daddy might be up to. Kezzie Knott was seen
tucking a pair of diamond earrings into the pocket of his
blue chambray shirt. Ad why is he suddenly interested in the
state of his soul? Does his involvement with a sanctimonious
preacher signal a sense of his inevitable mortality?
Before the book ends, Deborah herself becomes the
killer's target and gets a whiff of her own mortality.
Although the characters are all fiction, this book is drawn
from some of the real growing pains my own community is
currently experiencing. We keep hoping that the population
explosion will soon level off and that farmers won't be
taxed off land that has been in their family for a hundred
and fifty years. You can count on Deborah to have an opinion
about that.
Stay tuned!
—Margaret Maron
|
|
|
| |
JULY MYSTERY TRIVIA
More First Lines to Die For |
|
| |
Do you know how some of the greatest mysteries began?
See if you can match these first lines with the correct
book.
|
1. "I first heard Personville called Poisonville by
a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big
Ship in Butte."
|
|
2. "I didn't know their names. I'd never heard their
voices." |
|
3. "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he
was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the
terrace of The Dancers." |
|
4. "There are people who can be happy anywhere. I am
not one of them." |
|
5. "The road to the partnership began without my
knowing it, and it was a revival of the Blanchard-Bleichert
fight brouhaha that brought me the word." |
|
6. "I've never actually killed anybody before,
murdered another person, snuffed out another human
being." |
|
a) The Ax, Donald E. Westlake |
|
b) A Field of Darkness, Cornelia Read |
|
c) The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy |
|
d) Rear Window, Cornell Woolrich |
|
e) The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler |
|
f) Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett |
Mystery trivia answers in next month's e-Newsletter.
|
|
|
Back to newsletter list
