murder@maggody.com
by Joan Hess
It looks as if, for once in his sorry life, Jim Bob Buchanon, beetle-browed mayor of Maggody, Ark. (pop. 755, not counting Cousin Raz’s pedigreed sow Marjorie), was right: the grant that Lottie Estes won to buy computers for the high school has brought nothing but trouble. At first it seemed that Justin Bailey, grad student wannabe from Farberville and his postmodern wife, Chapel, really could turn the townsfolk from hicks to hackers. But Dahlia Buchanon sees something on her screen that makes her send her beloved Kevvie into temporary exile, leaving her holed up in her house with her mother-in-law, Eileen. Gwynnie Patchwood turns up missing after her evening computer class, and her uncle Daniel disappears on his way to a conference in Springfield, leaving chief of police Arly Hanks—alternately assisted and distracted by amateur gumshoes Ruby Bee and Estelle—to search Stump County for clues, from the Pot O’ Gold Trailer Park to Cotter’s Ridge, as Maggody mysteries multiply. You’ll need a database to keep all the puzzles straight, and the solutions range from obvious to clever to incomprehensible. But like the earlier chronicles of Maggody (Misery Loves Maggody, 1998, etc.), the true delight here is a chance to travel alongside the sharpest small-town sleuth since Miss Marple visited her first vicarage in St. Mary’s Mead.