A Holly, Jolly Murder: A Claire Malloy Mystery (Claire Malloy Mysteries Book 12)

THE GIFT THAT GIVES ON GIVING. . . With Farberville's college on holiday break, Claire Malloy's bookstore is quiet . . . deadly quiet. Breaking the silence is a little old lady looking for volumes on pagan rituals, applied magick, and Celtic mysticism. Claire is intrigued and—miffed that her lover, Farberville police Lieutenant Peter Rosen, says she's in a rut—happily accepts an invitation to welcome the winter solstice at dawn. HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS Showing up at the Sacred Grove, Claire expects wild chanting or even nude dancing. Instead she ends up sitting on a stump watching the Arch Druid clean her bifocals. Then winter arrives and so does a dead man. Someone has shot the wealthy benefactor of Farberville's neo-pagans. Now Claire is mixing some snooping with her Christmas shopping. But instead of wrapping up the case, she finds out 'tis the season for ho- ho- homicide . . . and she may be the next victim. ϡ쯦랠 A few days before Christmas, bookseller Claire Malloy determines that she has heard one too many comments about being set in her ways. To quiet such complaints she accepts an invitation from an eccentric customer to a New Age celebration of the winter solstice. An early morning adventure with Malthea, Arch Druid of the Sacred Grove of Keltria, should have been enough to prove that Claire has not yet settled into middle-aged complacency. But the morning's activities provide more than she bargained for once one of Malthea's followers turns up dead. Our heroine sets out to determine whether her new acquaintances are murderous Satanists or only very odd, and, in the process, to discover just who shot whom. Holly Jolly Murder is Joan Hess's 12th mystery featuring Book Depot proprietor and attractive widow Malloy as an inadvertent sleuth. Better known are Hess's Maggody books, which richly parody livin', dyin', and prayin' in the backwoods of Arkansas. The Malloy series is similarly witty, but its humor is a bit more subtle and less predictable than that of its country cousin. The college town that Malloy inhabits allows for occasional digs at academia as well as a broader range of quirky and seemingly less contrived characters--a Druid priestess being the obvious example. In Holly Jolly Murder, Hess has set the stage for Claire to come into her own as an accidental detective (lover-policeman Peter is conveniently away for the holidays) with suitably festive results

THE GIFT THAT GIVES ON GIVING. . .
With Farberville's college on holiday break, Claire Malloy's bookstore is quiet . . . deadly quiet. Breaking the silence is a little old lady looking for volumes on pagan rituals, applied magick, and Celtic mysticism. Claire is intrigued and—miffed that her lover, Farberville police Lieutenant Peter Rosen, says she's in a rut—happily accepts an invitation to welcome the winter solstice at dawn.

HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Showing up at the Sacred Grove, Claire expects wild chanting or even nude dancing. Instead she ends up sitting on a stump watching the Arch Druid clean her bifocals. Then winter arrives and so does a dead man. Someone has shot the wealthy benefactor of Farberville's neo-pagans. Now Claire is mixing some snooping with her Christmas shopping. But instead of wrapping up the case, she finds out ‘tis the season for ho- ho- homicide . . . and she may be the next victim.

THE GIFT THAT GIVES ON GIVING. . . With Farberville's college on holiday break, Claire Malloy's bookstore is quiet . . . deadly quiet. Breaking the silence is a little old lady looking for volumes on pagan rituals, applied magick, and Celtic mysticism. Claire is intrigued and#8212;miffed that her lover, Farberville police Lieutenant Peter Rosen, says she's in a rut#8212;happily accepts an invitation to welcome the winter solstice at dawn. HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYSShowing up at the Sacred Grove, Claire expects wild chanting or even nude dancing. Instead she ends up sitting on a stump watching the Arch Druid clean her bifocals. Then winter arrives and so does a dead man. Someone has shot the wealthy benefactor of Farberville's neo-pagans. Now Claire is mixing some snooping with her Christmas shopping. But instead of wrapping up the case, she finds out 'tis the season for ho- ho- homicide . . . and she may be the next victim