SummaryThere's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police
chief officially made 92-year old Victoria Trumbull her
deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything
about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the
Martha's Vineyard year-round population as well. Not to
mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the
usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians (she
has a cutoff shoe to accommodate her bunion, and a stout
stick to help her on her walks across the fields and in the
woods). But she is as sharp and as sharpeyed as the
proverbial tack. So it's not odd that when Victoria is the
only one who notices something amiss among the gravestones
of the West Tisbury cemetery, the chief listens. Something is indeed amiss. Responding to a request by
presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for
reburying elsewhere, things go wrong from the start. The
driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin
disappears during the Island ferry trip in a rainstorm.
Other deaths - some of them irrefutably murder, the others
suspicious - follow. And when as a last measure the coffin
is found, dug up and opened, it does not contain the
expected body. Insult upon injury, the coffin itself
disappears. Meanwhile, the available for rent bedroom in Victoria's
house has been taken over by a woman relative of one of
their neighbors and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled
as the most bratty millionaire's heir. Victoria is graceful
about her unwanted boarders; but they do interfere with the
column she writes for the local newspaper and with her
efforts to discover whether the strange antics of the
coffin are related to the murders. Victoria is the most realistic and the most delightful
nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted
her intelligence and her sharp wit. We're lucky that she's
still around and seems to be set for a long time.
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