Reviewer Mary Lignor: Mary is a retired librarian, originally from Connecticut but now living in New Mexico. All her life Mary has loved books and has passed this love on to her daughters. Mary started working in a library when her children were young as an Assistant Librarian and ended up as its Director. Her favorite books are suspense, political intrigue and anything involving the World War II era.
Author: Katherine Hall Page
ISBN:
978-0-06-147425-5
Click Here To Purchase The Body in the Sleigh: A Faith Fairchild Mystery (Faith Fairchild Mysteries)
It's Holiday time and the Fairchild
Family, Faith, Tom, Ben and Amy are spending it in their summer
cottage on Sanpere Island on the coast of Maine. Maine you
ask? In the middle of winter? That's just crazy.
But, Tom is recuperating from major surgery and the family decides to
go to their cottage where he can relax and have a pleasant, quiet
recuperation. Still, just like Jessica Fletcher from Murder She
Wrote, whenever Faith shows up anywhere, the dead bodies start to
pile up. Although, things start out very quietly, family time
together, watching ice boaters, snow shoeing in the woods and a lot
of reading, things are about to happen.
Faith takes the
children to town one morning to take Christmas pictures in front of
the Sanpere Historical Society. They had decorated an old
sleigh with Christmas packages and a couple of manikins dressed up in
antique costumes. But, as Faith is taking the pictures she
notices that there are three manikins. And, the third figure
turns out to be a dead body. The victim is Norah Taft, a young
woman who had lived on Sanpere during the summer months and just
recently had come back to live full time with her mother. She
was apparently a drug addict and had committed suicide. Many
people on the Island remembered her fondly and were very disturbed by
her death.
In the meantime, also on the
island, a local woman, Mary Bethany, who raises goats comes upon a
newborn baby boy in her barn on Christmas Eve. The only
indications of his identity are a note asking Mary to raise the baby
as well as a lot of cash. Mary asks Faith to help her find the
identity of the baby's mother and during their investigation they
find that the truth behind the child abandonment is connected somehow
to Norah's death.
This book is a page-turner. Ms.
Page is wonderful as usual and ties everything up at the end with her
usual talent. She is a great story teller and has won about
every prize given to Mystery Authors. However, I've read
all of her previous books about Faith Fairchild (17) and they all had
a certain light-heartedness about them. This book is entirely
different. It is much darker but the story is really
excellent. The plots jump around a little but, if you read this
author's books like I do you don't put it down long enough to get
confused. Excellent job, Ms. Page. I'm so relieved you
haven't decided to have Faith go after a group of vegetarian
vampires. They are really getting old. Thanks for the
great read.
Click Here To Purchase The Body in the Sleigh: A Faith Fairchild Mystery (Faith Fairchild Mysteries)