Please welcome Kaitlyn Dunnett, to talk about her new release, Clause and Effect.
Suspect Everyone
by
Kaitlyn Dunnett
Amateur detectives need an active imagination to put clues together, but that also means they come up with some pretty wild scenarios on the way to figuring out what really happened. In the second “Deadly Edits” mystery, Clause & Effect, retired schoolteacher turned freelance editor Mikki Lincoln is present at the Lenape Hollow Historical Society when a wall comes down during renovations to reveal a mummified murder victim hidden in an old chimney.
What seemed like a simple task—update the script for the historical pageant presented at the town’s bicentennial so it can be reused twenty-five years later—is suddenly much more complicated, especially after the victim is identified as Grace Yarrow, the author of that script. Mikki has taken over where Grace left off with the pageant, but is she also following in her footsteps when it comes to threatening someone’s secrets?
Although she never intended to get involved in solving another murder, Mikki can’t help but speculate about the people she’s met since starting work on the project. Some of them were around a quarter of a century ago and knew the victim, perhaps better than they’re letting on. Before long, Mikki has a full roster of suspects.
Is the killer Roberta “Sunny” Feldman, last owner of the world-famous Feldman’s Catskill Resort Hotel? She sold out years ago, just before the heyday of the Borsht Belt came to an end. She may be in her eighties now, but she’s still a force to be reckoned with. Twenty-five years ago, jealousy might have led her to kill Grace Yarrow.
Jealousy could also have motivated Veronica “Ronnie” North, the classmate who tried her best to make Mikki miserable in high school. She hasn’t mellowed much in the fifty-plus years since they graduated, and she’s been married and widowed three times in the interim. Did Grace try to steal husband number two?
Then there’s Gilbert Baxter, current director of the historical society. He knew Grace back in the day, perhaps better than anyone suspected at the time. Mikki finds a clue in the bicentennial pageant that suggests Grace was willing to fudge on the town’s history to give his family a more prominent role.
And what about Judy, the older sister of Mikki’s best friend Darlene? She knew Grace, too, and the evidence suggests there was a lot of hanky-panky going on at the historical society back in the day. Judy’s not been completely honest about what she remembers, but is she guilty of murder?
With all those suspects to choose from, you’d think Mikki could stop adding names to her list, but the question of whether or not Grace Yarrow might have had a child has her adding one more. She can’t help but wonder about the coincidence of her own distant cousin, Luke Darbee, showing up in town when he does. She knows nothing about him but what he’s told her . . . and that they share that unfortunate physical characteristic, the Greenleigh nose. He’s obviously too young to have killed Grace, but when a second murder occurs, she has to consider the possibility that he might have come to Lenape Hollow looking to avenge Grace’s death.
Past and present collide as Mikki gathers more clues. By the time she figures out whodunnit, she’s attracted the attention of the killer and is in danger of becoming the next victim. Is the murderer one of those people she’s been suspicious of all along . . . or someone else entirely?
The good news is that you don’t have to wait to find out. Clause & Effect is available in hardcover and e-book today.
With the June 2019 publication of Clause & Effect, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett will have had sixty books traditionally published. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries, and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries and the “Deadly Edits” series as Kaitlyn. As Kathy, her most recent book is a collection of short stories, Different Times, Different Crimes. Her websites are http://www.KaitlynDunnett.com and http://www.KathyLynnEmerson.com and she maintains a website about women who lived in England between 1485 and 1603 at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women.
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