Death by the Light of the Moon

March 2, 1992
With deep affection and a sure, light touch, Hess, author also of the Maggody series, portrays characters ranging from a heavy metal aficionado to a wildly eccentric Southern lady of a certain age in this thoroughly modern gothic tale. Bookstore owner/sleuth Claire Malloy, encountered most recently in Roll Over and Play Dead , finds little but trouble when she and teenage daughter Caron attend the 80th birthday celebration of Miss Justicia, mother of Claire's late husband, at the family manor in the Louisiana bayous. Feuding relatives, mysterious hints about inheritances and terrible food begin a ghastly first night that will also include the drowning of the matriarch after she is seen careening drunkenly about the garden in her powered wheelchair. Various family members, among them Claire's brother-in-law, his grasping children and a socialite cousin with designs on the family mansion, look for a missing will while striving to keep up appearances, as Claire tries to conduct what she is certain is a murder investigation. While at times Hess draws her characters too broadly, her well-paced and well-plotted stories still delight.

March 1, 1992
Summoned to the 80th birthday party and will reading of her eccentric mother-in-law, Claire Malloy, another series amateur, flies to the moldering Louisiana plantation home of her deceased husband. The motley assortment of greedy, shifty, and backbiting relatives she encounters there tests her patience and the limits of satire. The visit turns crazy as soon as the old woman, cackling, races her motorized wheelchair into the bayou and drowns. Then begins a frantic search for the will, for family skeletons, and for a murderer. Mostly tongue-in-cheek--as usual for the series--and mostly amusing.

Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.