Murder and Sullivan: A Joan Spencer Mystery

Despite the tornado that opens this tale and its suspenseful climax at an abandoned quarry, the latest appearance of Joan Spencer (after Buried in Quilts, 1995) is as enervated as its Indiana college town setting is by the relentless summer heat. A minister's widow and violist, Joan is director of the town's Senior Citizens' Center and manager of the Civic Orchestra. When she volunteers to play the viola in the local production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, she has no idea that David Putnam, a circuit court judge and thespian, will be murdered onstage. Aided by her son Andrew, an 18-year-old student at the college, Joan discovers that a large number of the apparently respectable citizens of Oliver had motive to murder Putnam. A jealous husband, an aggrieved defendant, a building contractor, an unethical professor--all are shown, by Joan's gentle questioning and by Detective Fred Lundquist's more pointed queries, to have motive, means and opportunity. Joan and Fred's romance, like the rest of the book, lacks energy. Even the truly suspenseful and chilling finale doesn't quite redeem this effort. (May)