***TV/Film Rights Optioned*** New Smyrna Beach Is About To Be Hit By An Unnatural Disaster. The Daffodils® Are Back!
Penny Sue, Ruthie and Leigh-the DAFFODILS* (*Divorced And Finally Free Of Deceitful, Insensitive, Licentious Scum®)-are Southern belles with attitudes and a knack for getting into trouble. Whenever these three middle-aged sorority sisters get together chaos is sure to descend on the quaint seaside town of New Smyrna Beach. And it's no different for the Founder's Day celebration where the featured event is a debate on which Florida city was discovered first-New Smyrna or St. Augustine. The New Smyrna advocate is Penny Sue's cousin Kevin, a renowned historian, and the opponent is his former lover, Abby, an award-winning Central Florida expert. With real estate/tourism money at stake and bets flying, you have the frenzy of a horse race and the ingredients for murder. How could a debate turn into a brawl? How does one of the scholars end up dead in the library stacks? Make no mistake, these fine Southern ladies are not the cause of all the trouble, bedlam just seems to follow them. But this debate is no game and the DAFFODILS must find the murderer before someone else is pushing up daisies.
Professional Reviews
A fun read that should prove very difficult to put down
A simple dispute can turn bloody with the right nudging. "Murder in the Stacks" is another entry into Mary Clay's DAFFODILS series, following a trio of middle-aged women celebrating their freedom from men they stayed with for far too long. When they go to the Floridian town of New Smyrna, a debate of its founding day versus St. Augustine flares up. As the DAFFODILS soon find, it may be up to them to solve this at first harmless debate which has spiraled out to the furthest thing from it. "Murder in the Stacks" is a fun read that should prove very difficult to put down.
Midwest Book Review--5 Stars
DAFFODILS* turns to TULIPS*
(*Totally, Utterly Living In Perpetual Satire)
"Murder in the Stacks is a fun summer read that will provide a good mental workout in crime solving. Grab yourself a copy—and a cocktail."
When this certain group of Southern women gets together, there always seems to be a murder—and as unfunny as murder sounds, author Mary Clay will have you rolling in the floor laughing—between trips to your liquor cabinet—as her mostly zany but likeable characters go about living, drinking and solving the "crime," in which they all are directly or indirectly involved.
In her most recent novel, "Murder in the Stacks," Clay spins her tale in New Smyrna Beach. Florida, where a controversy continues with history and archaeology experts over the timing of colonial establishments in St. Augustine and New Smyrna in the 1700s. A much anticipated debate on the subject at the New Smyrna library one night turns into an argument, then a melee. The meeting AND the library are evacuated and shut down.
Word soon gets out that two people are found dead in the library. That's when Clay's characters—primary are friends and former college chums Penny Sue, Ruthie and Leigh, who are now of a "certain age"—get to work: first, to determine the causes of death; then to unravel a complex set of seemingly unrelated facts that involve everything from past romances to home security systems, the New Jersey mafia, a women's investment club, book returns at the library and good old-fashioned detective work.
"Murder in the Stacks" is a fun summer read and will provide a good mental workout in crime solving. Grab yourself a copy—and a cocktail.
