Scent to Kill

January 21, 2013
In Fiedler’s well-crafted second mystery, set on Long Island’s North Fork (after 2012’s Death Drops), a film crew plans to shoot a segment for a TV show about psychics at producer Roger Bixby’s Southport mansion, reputed to be haunted by a 1933 murder victim. When Bixby drowns one night, a victim of foul play, naturopathic doctor Willow McQuade, the owner of Nature’s Way Market and Café in nearby Greenport, rushes to the defense of the chief suspect—her former boyfriend, Simon Lewis, who quarreled with Bixby earlier in the day. Two almost identical murders decades apart spur Willow to unravel the complex relationships between Bixby and his film crew, as well as between his forebears and the townspeople, to discover who might have wished the producer dead. Devotees of natural medicine and aromatherapy will enjoy the tips that appear at the beginning of each chapter and scattered throughout the text. Agent: Anne Collette, Helen Rees Literary Agency.

January 15, 2013
A naturopathic doctor tries to help a former boyfriend stay out of jail for murder. After the murder of her aunt, Willow McQuade, ND, has left California behind, successfully taken over her aunt's store in Greenport, Long Island, and nurtured a romantic relationship with Jackson Spade, the former police officer who helped her solve her aunt's murder (Death Drops, 2012). Willow's ex, Simon Lewis, has invited them to a party at the Bixby Estate, where Simon and Roger Bixby are involved in shooting a paranormal television show. When the contentious Roger is found drowned on the beach, the police fasten on Simon, who had a fight with him earlier that day. Despite her bad feeling about the old house, Willow can't refuse Simon's pleas for help. Soon, Jackson agrees to help with security, and Willow and her staff members take over a cottage on the estate to treat the stressed-out crew. Roger's death is a blessing of sorts for Simon's new girlfriend, Carly, who can now drop divorce proceedings against him. But his death changes nothing for his powder-keg brother Tom, also hired to work on the show, who continues to deny his problems with drinking and drugs. Also in residence in another cottage on the estate are the star of the show, spiritualist MJ, and her husband, Rick, and, in still another cottage, the caretaker and his family. When the autopsy shows that Roger was drowned in lavender bath water, Willow learns that his death apes the murder of the caretaker's father, a case never solved but widely believed to have been committed by Roger's father. Like Willow's debut, this sequel is stronger on aromatherapy than mystery.

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