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Radine's Books
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: St Kitts Press
ISBN-10: 1931206074
Type: Fiction
Pages: 269
Copyright: Dec 1, 2020
ISBN-13: 9781931206075
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Solving Peculiar Crimes gives readers a delicious collection of stories featuring Carrie McCrite and Henry King, who also star in Radine Trees Nehring's "To Die For" mystery novel series. These stories take us into Carrie and Henry's lives as a newly married couple, and show readers how they and their friends in the Ozarks work together to save people caught in webs of dangerous--and peculiar--crimes.
Set for the most part in the beautiful Arkansas Ozarks, each of the thirteen stories in this anthology offers chills and surprises. Though the main "detectives" are Carrie McCrite and her husband, retired Police Major Henry King, other crime stoppers include Ozarks natives, Shirley and Roger Booth, and, in two stories,the pre-school twins Jeremy and Jemima. Criminals are also often unique, including another child, a young girl involved (innocently) in a major shop-lifting scheme . ( "The Tattle-Tale.")
Several of the stories are set in real locations in Arkansas, including two National Historic sites, (Pea Ridge National Military Park at a Civil War Re-enactment killing, and a genuine hanging at Fort Smith National Historic Site), an attempted murder at Ozark Folk Center State Park, a murder during a children's program at a real Arkansas Library, and a revenge kidnapping during a Police Officers' Ball in Kansas City, MO. (Henry describes this event to Carrie as "Veddy, veddy, formal" as he takes her to the most exclusive woman's shop in the area to purchase a formal gown "with cleavage" for the occasion.)
There are also stories with a touch of romance--"Crime Goes on a Honeymoon," "Saved by a Train," and "Planning a Crime and a Wedding."
This story collection is designed to offer puzzles and crimes, as well as examples of good and evil, but they also offer satisfaction at the end of each story. Mystery author Marily Meredith says"What I really liked is the unusual endings of many of these mysteries."
Excerpt
The constant "pock-pocka-pock" of the muskets wasn't so bad. The boom of the cannons--from this distance at least--was endurable, especially for someone who had listened to rock drummers turned up loud. But the wind was sending black powder smoke straight toward them and, in this heat, that was awful. The whole idea was stupid and awful. She was hot, sweaty, and she'd had enough.
Out on the field, men were playing at dying. You could hear their screams and moans above the other noises of battle. They were certainly realistic about it. Just a few minutes ago, as a charge was surging forward in front of them, there had been a sharp crack--an odd sound for a musket, she thought. Before that there was an almost female-sounding cry, the name "David." Surely a name wasn't what she really heard.
After the shot, a man right in front of them dropped to his knees and collapsed on the ground, too hard, too realistically. Ouch! These men got way too wrapped up in play-acing at war. Idiot. He might have cracked his head open.
Quite a few of the casualties were choosing to fall in the shade of the pasture's trees. That showed some degree of sense, at least. Maybe this man's captain, or general, or whatever the man running this re-enactment was called, had suggested where and when he should die. She wondered what would happen if, without instructions, every single soldier here decided to be shot at the same time and the whole army toppled over.
Carrie straightened the straw hat balanced on her grey curls, shifted position in her green canvas folding chair, and glanced over at the two people sitting next to her. They wouldn't care if she left. She could walk over to the Sutler's Camp area. She didn't need any 1860's style merchandise, but sutlers and their battlefield supply camps were a part of Civil War history, and they had to be a lot more interesting that soldiers playing at dying in heat and smoke.
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