Murder in Primary Colors : The Dr. Christmas Connery Cozy Mysteries, no. 1

When a living history museum turns deadly, an armchair historian must transform herself into a woman of action. It's the week before Thanksgiving, and history book author, Miranda Lewis, has deadlines to meet. But when a check-in call to her eighteen-year-old niece, Caroline, ends in tears and a hang up, Miranda rushes to Plimoth Plantation, where Caroline works as an interpreter, portraying a Pilgrim woman. At the recreated seventeenth-century Pilgrim village in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Miranda encounters protesting Indians, quarrelsome Pilgrims, and finally a grisly murder. Overheard arguing with the victim the night before, Caroline is a suspect in the killing. Determined to clear Caroline's name, Miranda delves into the present-day lives of the interpreters, including the victim himself. Her quest for the truth also leads her to explore the history of the often troubled relations between the white settlers and the Native peoples. In the end, she finds herself face-to-face with a killer who will stop at nothing to conceal his crime. Normally the most violent thing that happens on the campus of Midstate University is a football game, but that all suddenly changes. Dr. Christmas Connery and her basset hound find Elizabeth Page, the director of the Midstate Museum of Art, dead on the gallery floor in the middle of a kinetic sculpture exhibit shortly after a successful opening. It gets even more complicated when it's discovered she was killed with a very unusual weapon, one that crushed the side of her skull with a half-inch steel ball bearing. The list of people who were not fond of Page is a long one. She could charm the big bucks out of even the stingiest donors, but she rarely wasted her energy on even being polite to her colleagues. Chris's murder-buff mother, Pansy, while visiting Chris, works her wiles on the police detective in charge, whose unwelcome presence on campus shakes the ivy-covered walls to their foundations. When the most obvious suspect is murdered, even Chris herself is suddenly in danger.