ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER
by Leslie Meier
Yet more nasty newcomers invade the earthly paradise that is Tinker’s Cove.
A discouraging welcome is in store for Dylan and Moira Malone, who’ve traveled across the ocean to Maine to direct and star in Father Ed O’Neil’s St. Patrick’s Day production of Finian’s Rainbow, set to mark the centennial of Our Lady of Hope Church. Their plans to bunk with him are seriously crimped when the headless corpse of Dylan’s brother Dan—owner of the Bilge, chosen watering hole of Tinker’s Cove’s huddled masses—washes ashore. But the show must go on, and the Malones regroup. Soon Dylan has recruited Bill Stone to renovate the Bilge into a family-friendly bistro, and Moira, having stolen the leading musical role from Lucy’s much-better-voiced friend Rachel Goodman, seems intent on hijacking Bill’s wife Lucy (Bake Sale Murder, 2006, etc.) as a babysitter for her daughter Deirdre. But Lucy has her own ideas about how to spend her precious time, and it isn’t babysitting fey little tykes who believe in fairies or in interviewing crazy old men who comb the beach with metal detectors looking for lost jewelry, as her boss, Pennysaver editor Ted Stillings, instructs her to do. She wants to know who murdered Dan, and not Bill, not Ted, not even humorless detective Horowitz is going to keep her from her big story.
Don’t expect a pot of gold at the end of this one.