WHITE ELEPHANT DEAD

Another of the author’s labyrinthine exercises in detection on Broward’s Rock, a small, gossipy island off the coast of South Carolina (Mint Julep Murder, 1995, etc.) where Annie Darling owns the Death on Demand bookstore and her husband Max is a private investigator. As the story opens, preparations for the annual Women’s Club White Elephant sale are in full swing. Volunteer Kathryn Girard is using the Women’s Club van to cover a list of pickup addresses, but the weather is so beastly that Henny Brawley, responsible for the van and impatiently awaiting Kathryn’s overdue return, decides to go looking for her. When Henny fails to come back and the storm grows ever fiercer, Annie and Max set out to investigate in turn. In a remote lane, they discover the van, with Kathryn’s bludgeoned body in the back, and Henny’s old Dodge nearby—but where’s Henny? Searchers comb the area until she’s found, unconscious, with a severe blow to the head. Rushed to a hospital, Henny very slowly recovers as newly arrived Police Chief Garrett prepares to charge her with murder. Annie and Max now go all out to find the reason for Kathryn’s death and soon discover that she was a blackmailer with a victim at each of the four stops on her list. It takes the death of an uninvolved bystander—and much exploration of past tragedies—before Annie can confront the real killer. Full of determinedly odd characters and heavily contrived motives, with references to fictional sleuths and mystery writers on nearly every page: overall, a downer that produces boredom and irritation in nearly equal degree.