Christietown: A Novel About Vintage Clothing, Romance, Mystery, and Agatha Christie

A new suspense-themed housing tract on the edge of the Mojave Desert is about to open, and who better to help promote the Cotswold-cozy development than mystery biographer extraordinaire Cece Caruso? For the grand opening weekend, Cece is staging a play featuring the beloved sleuth Miss Marple. Of course, everything goes wrong, including a leading lady who ends up dead. All is not well in Christietown; its secrets are as complicated as the truth behind Agatha Christie's real-life disappearance. The developer, an Englishman who claims to be Dame Agatha's descendent, has ruthless investors breathing down his neck. Meanwhile, Cece's got a wedding to plan, a baby shower to give, and an ex-husband who shows up on her doorstep with his fiancée and future mother-in-law. And when another body surfaces, the intrepid amateur sleuth knows she must play the famed detective for real—or suffer the same mysterious fate. From Publishers Weekly Kandel's entertaining but thin fourth puzzler (after 2006's Shamus in the Green Room ) finds sleuthing biographer and vintage fashion hound Cece Caruso putting the finishing touches on her account of Agatha Christie's life. But her editor's demands for rewrites are an unwelcome distraction from the baby shower she's throwing for her pregnant daughter, Annie, and the wedding plans she's making with her fiancé, L.A. detective Peter Gambino. Cece is also directing a Miss Marple–themed play for the opening ceremonies of a housing development called Christietown, a "Cotswaldsesque cozyland" built by ex-circus huckster Ian Christie, who claims to be a distant relative of the queen of crime. But when the lead actress goes missing on opening night and later turns up dead, Cece once again turns sleuth. As with previous installments in this stylish series, Kandel deftly contrasts clever excerpts from Cece's biographies with her personal dilemmas, but the contrived mystery plot disappoints. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the Author Susan Kandel is a former art critic for the Los Angeles Times . She has taught at New York University and UCLA, and served as the editor of the international journal artext. She lives with her family in West Hollywood, California. A new suspense-themed housing tract on the edge of the Mojave Desert is about to open, and who better to help promote the Cotswold-cozy development than mystery biographer extraordinaire Cece Caruso? For the grand opening weekend, Cece is staging a play featuring the beloved sleuth Miss Marple. Of course, everything goes wrong, including a leading lady who ends up dead.All is not well in Christietown; its secrets are as complicated as the truth behind Agatha Christie's real-life disappearance. The developer, an Englishman who claims to be Dame Agatha's descendent, has ruthless investors breathing down his neck. Meanwhile, Cece's got a wedding to plan, a baby shower to give, and an ex-husband who shows up on her doorstep with his fiancee and future mother-in-law. And when another body surfaces, the intrepid amateur sleuth knows she must play the famed detective for real—or suffer the same mysterious fate. Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 1, 2007).