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DEADLY LITTLE CHRISTMAS, A
by Mary V. Welk
Kleworks Publishing Co., July 1998
262 pages
$10.00
ISBN: 0966515706


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

If as a child, as I did, you read the Cherry Ames nurse series, then the Caroline Rhodes books may be for you. Mary Welk has created a grown up Cherry Ames in her protagonist, the widowed Caroline Rhodes, who has moved from Chicago at the behest of her son and daughter in law, to act as dorm mother to the student nurses at St. Anne's hospital.

Cari is substituting on the Psych Ward. It's nearly Christmas and the inmates are decorating the beautiful new artificial Christmas tree set up in the day room. There are 6 patients and a student nurse in the room. The student cajoles a nearly catatonic man to plug the tree in. He does so and there is an horrific explosion. All 7 die.

Caroline is a suspect. After her husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver one morning, she went into such a deep depression that finally her son and daughters had to put her into an institution. She played the game and got out, but her children still worry, which is why she is now living in Rhineburg, where her son is a graduate student at Bruck U.

She is introduced to her son's mentor, who is a 300 lb white haired bearded man. Carl Atwater and Rhodes go sleuthing on their own, and finally reach a striking conclusion about the reasons for the deaths in the psych ward and for several other deaths around town, both past and present.

This is sort of a cozy. The opening chapter, with its tree blasting a room and its people apart, is definitely not cozy. The Christmas parade, with Carl as Santa, and the idyllic appearance of the campus is (no cats though) But Rhodes is no Miss Marple, and the ending is definitely a great shock.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, June 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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