IRISH PARADE MURDER

A small-town reporter faces big changes, both personal and professional.

After coming home to Maine from her father-in-law’s funeral in Florida, Lucy Stone runs slap into a major kerfuffle at the Pennysaver, Tinker Cove’s premier (and, let’s face it, only) print news source. At first, it looks as if Lucy’s about to lose her star reporting gig because publisher Ted Stillings will sell the paper. But no—what he’s actually done is buy an adjacent town’s local weekly, the Gilead Gabber, planning to expand their merged newsrooms and start an online edition while maintaining each paper’s print masthead. He’s even hired Rob Callahan away from the Cleveland Plain Dealer to give his new venture some big-city cachet. Not surprisingly, Rob turns out to be a bossy know-it-all who edits mistakes into Lucy’s city budget article while lounging in Ted’s office. But she’s not about to allow pushy Rob to steal her prize story: the battle for the post of Grand Marshal of the Gilead Hibernian Knights Society’s annual Irish Parade. While she tussles to retain her turf at the office, there’s a new threat at home. Her husband, Bill, has received a letter from a younger woman claiming to be his half sister, complete with a DNA test. Instead of being horrified to discover that her late husband may have had a child with another woman during their marriage, Edna Stone is thrilled to meet this new member of her family. Given all this domestic strife, Lucy’s nonplussed when Tinker’s Cove latest fatality is none of the players mentioned above but a corrections officer suspected of harassing female inmates.

Dedicated fans of the franchise may enjoy watching Meier’s heroine negotiate the distance between public and private life.