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MURDER, SHE WROTE: A SLAYING IN SAVANNAH
by Donald Bain and Jessica Fletcher
NAL Hardcover, September 2008
304 pages
$21.95
ISBN: 0451225058


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

When well-known mystery writer Jessica Fletcher learns about the death of a dear old friend, Tillie Mortelaine, in Savannah Georgia, she's saddened. Tillie had always had a zest for life and tended to live in a fast and interesting way. But then Jessica finds out that her friend, who was always an eccentric person, has left her something in her will.

Jessica is invited to go to Savannah for the will's reading, but as Tillie's lawyer explains the bequest of a million dollars is to be used to continue the literacy fund that the women had started together over twenty years ago. In addition, in order for Jessica to get the money, she must do something for Tillie first. Over forty years ago, after Tillie had been a widow for years, she had been planning to remarry. Her fiancé, Wanamaker Jones, was shot in Tillie's house after a New Year's Eve party. To this day no one has discovered who the killer was and Tillie wants Jessica to take a month to find the guilty party. If she does it, the million dollars is hers to contribute to the literacy fund. Jessica knows that if she doesn't discover the guilty party it will be an embarrassment to her, but even so, she can't rightly just throw away a millions dollars for such a good cause in all good conscience, so she accepts the challenge.

Following the will's instructions, Jessica is to live in Tillie's mansion for the month that she investigates the forty year old murder and she meets the people who have been living off Tillie's largess for years. There's a general who is twenty years Tillie's junior who insists that Tillie and he were just about to marry. There's the housekeeper who keeps her mouth closed at all times and there's the married couple who have been studying the ghosts who are supposed to be haunting the mansion.

Jessica also has to deal with Tillies's lawyer, an elderly man who was at the deadly New Year's Eve party that long ago evening when Jones was shot, but for some reason he avoids mentioning that to Jessica. She also meets the man and woman who forty years ago, as little children, were the ones who discovered the cooling body of Wanamaker Jones. They are Tillie's only living relatives and as nasty and greedy a couple as have been born. Also on Jessica's list of people to be interviewed, are the now elderly and frail people who were at the deadly New Year's Party and who have lived their lives connected to Tillie and her wealth.

Based on the successful television program, Murder She Wrote, that was aired on TV from 1984 - 1996 this book is the latest in a very long line of books written about the series after it was cancelled. Though I never watched the television series, I am a fan of these books, supposedly written by the fictional Jessica with the help of living writer Donald Bain.

A SLAYING IN SAVANNAH is a very well written installment of the series. Though Jessica travels to Savannah and leaves the denizens of her home, Cabot Cove, Maine. behind, she meets a great bunch of characters in Savannah to keep her busy as most of them soon become suspects in the decades old murder.

Because the killing happened so long ago, there is very little tension in this mystery. There is an incident where Jessica's life might be in danger, but the writer Donald Bain doesn't make a big issue of it. Mostly we follow Jessica as she interviews all the interested parties from the old murder scene all the way to the end where Jessica solves the case in the style of the best cozies.

A SLAYING IN SAVANNAH will keep you entertained on every page and will leave you looking forward to the next in the printed MURDER SHE WROTE series!

Reviewed by A.L. Katz, December 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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