Murder on the Hoof

March 17, 2014
At the start of O’Sullivan’s stylish sequel to 2013’s Foal Play, Colleen McCabe, fire chief of Corolla, N.C., is running a training exercise with her crew on the beach, using the community’s acting troupe as victims, while her best friend, Sheriff Bill Dorman, keeps vacationers at a safe distance. Unfortunately, one of the actors lying in the sand—Doris Jenkins, “a plump, curvaceous woman in her sixties”—is dead. Feeling in some way responsible for Doris’s death, Colleen decides to investigate on her own. When a second member of the theater group is killed, Colleen and Bill have a pair of murders to solve. The duo could work well together, if jealousy about past and doubts about future relationships don’t get in the way. The author makes good use of the Outer Banks setting, seamlessly weaving in a few of the area’s tourist attractions, as well as its protected wild horses, into the plot. Agent: Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Literary Agency.

May 15, 2014
On a late summer day on the beach in Corolla, on the Outer Banks off North Carolina, Fire Chief Colleen McCabe is conducting what should be a routine training drill. This one looks more real than others, as the theater company is taking a break from rehearsals for an upcoming benefit to play victims in the disaster simulation. All is going well until one actress fails to get up from the beach at the end of the drill. When another in the company is killed a few days later, Bill Donovan, Currituck County sheriff, swings into action. But first, he and Colleen need to clear the air about their romantic involvement with other people, as well as share what they have each learned independently, so that they can work together on the finding the killer. They do, of course, and even though the theater company has lost two of its members, the show goes on, producing a play about the wild horses that live on a reserve near Corolla. An amiable mystery, sure to interest fans of Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott series, also set in North Carolina.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)