Kindle Edition Lea Wait's website Category:  Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Simon & Schuster - Pocket Books ISBN-10:  0743456203 Type: Fiction Pages: 255 Copyright: 2002 Antique print dealer Maggie Summer arrives at the Rensselaer County Antiques Fair, looking forward to renewing friendships and spending Memorial Day weekend selling prints in the country. Instead, the dealer in the next booth is found murdered Friday night, and her friend Gussie's young nephew Ben, who has Down Syndrome, is accused. Maggie can't believe he's guilty -- she must find out who is ... before another dealer dies .... Shadows at the Fair, the Agatha-finalist first in the Shadows Antique Print Mystery series, introduces Maggie Summer, antique print dealer and community college professor. In this exciting and praised series beginning, Maggie arrives to set up her booth at a Memorial Day show in New York State to find the dealers a-buzz with stories ... a number of their fellow dealers have died recently, some under questionable circumstances.  But the show must go on, and Maggie sets up her booth, arranging her antique prints and chatting with her friend Gussie, who exhibits dolls and toys, Gussie's nephew, Ben, and other dealers she's known for years. Gossip, opening night wine, and a few peaks at this year's crop of nerw dealers and merchandise - all is well. Until death claims another victim, and Ben becomes supect number one.  Maggie spends the rest of the weekend selling prints - and looking for a killer, as she tries to save Ben from a jail cell she is sure he does not deserve. In the meantime, there may be a new romantic interest in the wings -- and another murder to complicate her investigation. And perhaps Maggie herself is in danger! Antiques, customers, and a behind-the-scenes look at a major antiques show keep interest levels high, as the show -- and the suspense -- go on!   The show is based on the Rhinebeck Antiques Show held at the Duches County Fair grounds. Excerpt Antiques dealers might sometimes be cuthtroats, but they were couteous cutthroats and would seldom risk enbarrassing another dealer -- unless, of course, they could make a profit by it. The etiquette went with the role and the territory. Dealers would rarely admit they hadn't even made booth rent, or just as rarely, brag that they had just sold enough for a buying trip to Great Britain and a vacation in Tahiti. Profits, or the lack of them, were private. Maggie sat on the folding chair in her booth and exchanged muddy sneakers for dressy sandals, thinking about what she'd seen at the Show Management booth. Susan Findley and Vince Thompson. Odd. She tucked her sneakers under the table covers with her now empty cartons and portfolios and pulled out her sales book and the mahogany staionery box she'd inherited from the grandmoither and now used as a cash box for good luck. This show as going to be very, very interesting. Even without last week's murder.

First Time Forays into Crime From the Distaff Side
(The Boston Globe) One debut I especially enjoyed was Lea Wait's Shadows at the Fair, billed as the antique-print equivalent of John Dunning's Booked to Die, which I particularly enjoyed a few years ago. Just as Dumning knew wereof he wrote, combining the rare-book trade with murder, Wait has her own antique-print business and knows what she is talking about. Six antique deaers have died "under suspicious circumstances" when dealer Maggie Summer arrives to set up her booth at a spring antiques fair and as a seventh dies. Since a friend of Maggie's becomes the main suspect, Maggie feel she has little choice but to try to find the killer. There is a deadline, since everyone will disperse when the fair ends. If the siutation sounds a bit of a cliche, Wait renders the print business, the fair, and the mystery intriguingly and with a sense of style.
s

Shadows at the Fair (Publishers Weekly)
Homicide and antiques combine smoothly in this well-crafted mystery, the first in a new series from fourth-generation antiques daler and children's historical novelist Wait (Stopping to Home). Since several antiques dealers have died lately under suspicious circumstances, the police are especially vigilant at the Rensselaer County (NY) Spring Antiques Fair. Despite their precautions, recently widowed Maggie Summers, an antiques print dealer who calls her business "Shadows" has just set up her booth when she learns a fellow antiques dealers has died after a scuffle. The police soon accuse Ben, the 20-year-old nephew of Maggie's disabled friend, Gussie White, who has an adjoining booth, but Ben has Down Suyndrome and is unable to clear himself of the murder charge. A second death puts all the dealers under suspicion. Because the fair lasts only three days, Maggie and new acquaintance Will Brewer, a dealer in fireplace tools who has his charms ("Kindly women might have called him a teddy bear, complete with beard and slight beer belly,")must act quickly to help the police solve the murder before her colleagues (and the killer?) disperse. Full of fascinating information about antiques and antique fairs (each chapter head includes a catalog-like description of an antique print,) plus helpful maps and careful directions for finding one's place in the crime scene, this solid debut will appeal to cozy fans who appreciate a realistic background.

A Murder Mystery (Northeast Antiques)
If you have never heard of the Rensselaer County Antiques Fair, you are not alone. The show does not exist. Except, of course, in the pages of Shadows at the Fair, the first in a series by third generation antique print dealer Lea Wait, published by Scribner.
The setting of the book is actually based on the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair. The well-regarded show runs three times a year, in May, July and October, and has a reputation as a very well produced show, and a source for quality antiques .. and now the reference point for a murder mystery.
The imaginary setting for Lea Wait's Shadows at the Fair is the Spring edition of the Rensselaer Fair, held in May, portrayed in the book as a well-attended, three-day indoor affair.
The main character of the book, an antique print dealer, one Maggie Summer, recently widowed, finds herself involved with a series of murders perpetuated at several preceding antiques shows, and culminating at Rensselaer.
The twist, of course, is that Maggie's good friend and fellow dealer, Gussie White, confined to a wheelchair, is inexorably drawn into the mystery when her nephew, Ben, who has Down Syndrome, becomes the only suspect the poice decide could have been the perpetrator of the latest murder.
Maggie, therefore has to solve the urder within the 24 hours before load-out.
The story is only 256 pages in length, so it is a quick page-turner. It almost has to be, because you absolutely must find out "who done it!"
Maggie's proclivity for antique prints is integral to the story, and we get a minor, but interesting, education at the beginning of each new chapter. The story carries an urgency, and the main characters are adequately introduced and developed. One finds insights throughout the story as to the life of these "carnival-like" traveling dealers of antiques who count on these showes for their livelihood and a brief introuction to their possible psyche. Thoroughly enjoyable!