Mystery Scene Magazine

Daily Miscellany

“At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.”

- Raymond Chandler
(1888-1959)

Murder Buys a T-Shirt

by Christy Fifield
Berkley Prime Crime, March 2012, $7.99

 

In Christy Fifield’s new series opener, Murder Buys a T-Shirt, readers are introduced to Glory Martine, who inherited her uncle’s antique shop after he died a number of years ago. Only now, though, does she realize that there is something decidedly peculiar about the shop, Southern Treasures. Vintage newspapers and other items in the shop, for instance, have a way, at times, of disarranging themselves, sua sponte, into baffling chaos. Perhaps this is simply a manifestation of entropy, but when Bluebeard, Glory’s inherited parrot, begins spouting cryptic utterances in the voice of her deceased Uncle Louis, Glory knows it’s time to get to the bottom of several mysteries, beginning with the death of the star captain of the football team.

In Glory Martine, Fifield, the nom de plume of Oregon writer Christina F. York, introduces a refreshing new sleuth who still has a lot to uncover about her personal history. As the series progresses, I’m looking forward to learning more about Uncle Louis and his mysterious reluctance to move into the Great Beyond.

—Lynne Maxwell

 

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