The Death At Yew Corner

A no-nonsense politician and her children’s author husband search for answers to a retirement-home homicide in this gripping small-town murder mystery. Fabian Bunting wheels herself down the hallway of the nursing home, opera glasses clutched in her gnarled old hands. Outside, nurses on strike have formed a picket line, and Fabian wants to watch the commotion. As she peers through her binoculars, she sees something incredible: two men beating another senseless and tossing the victim into the back of a van. One of the thugs sees her, and before she can call for help, he has raced upstairs and tossed the helpless old woman into a scalding steam bath to boil alive. In her younger days, Fabian was a brilliant scholar, and the favorite professor of Connecticut politician Bea Wentworth, who has just been defeated in a re-election campaign. Bea refuses to believe her old teacher’s death was an accident and begins investigating. With the help of her husband, Lyon, a hot-air ballooning children’s author, she’ll find the answers to Fabian’s grisly murder lie at the center of an impossible locked-room puzzle. The Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries are unique for their blend of traditional mystery elements and hard-driving, page-turning action. “[This] is the most traditional book in the series to date,” wrote the New York Times. “It also may be the best.” The Death at Yew Corner is the 5th book in the Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. “[Forrest] writes with a sure hand, and as always, leavens the writing with a touch of humor. . . . A neat, well-plotted, expertly written job.” —The New York Times Praise for the Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries “[A] superb novel of detection . . . An intricate plot intelligently controlled.” —Publishers Weekly on A Child’s Garden of Death “The writing is stylish and the plotting swift and well knit: a pleasure.” —Booklist on The Pied Piper of Death

Many bibliographers focus on women who write. Lawyer Barnett looks at women who detect, at women as sleuths and at the evolving roles of women in professions and in society. Excellent for all women's studies programs as well as for the mystery hound.

A bibliography of various mystery novels published between November 1976 and Fall 1992.

A female racecar driver gets wrapped up in an ice skater’s gruesome murder in this page-turning thriller. Mauve Bridger is climbing out of the frozen lake when the ice breaks beneath her and she falls into the water. She hauls herself back onto the ladder, but someone pushes her back down. She swims blindly through the icy depths, finally escaping to the far side of the lake, but the killers are waiting for her there. They take her back to her house, kneel on her chest, and cut her throat with her own skates. First on the scene is L. C. Converse, a former racecar driver turned mechanic who happens to be on a date with the detective who catches Mauve’s case. L. C. witnessed her father’s murder five years ago, so finding Mauve on the floor brings back grisly memories—and this won’t be the last death. This quiet Connecticut town has been marked by murder, and to escape it, L. C. will have to race faster than she ever has before. L. C. is a classic Richard Forrest hero: an ordinary woman in a deadly situation that spirals out of control. Forrest was an expert at writing realistic emotional thrillers, and The Killing Edge shows him at his best.

Edgar- and Agatha-nominated author Colleen Barnett here updates her essential reference for readers and writers of mystery, examining women who detect, women as sleuths, and the evolving roles of women in professions and in society.